They Are To Keep Themselves Out Of The Arms Of The Evil One ( 1Jn 5:21 ).

‘Little children, guard yourselves from idols.’

It is regularly said that this comes as a rather strange comment at the end of the letter, almost unattached from the remainder. But that is to miss the point. For having given the great contrast between believers and unbelievers he wants to warn believers against what in those days was a major danger (and can be so in some countries today) for all ex-Gentile Christians, the lapse into contact with idolatrous practises.

You are hid with Christ in God, he as it were says, beware of being caught up again in your former ways. For let them not doubt that what men sacrifice to idols they sacrifice to devils, yes, even to the Evil One (1Co 10:20; Deu 32:17). Thus they must guard themselves lest the subtlety of Satan drag them back into what once entangled them, thus preventing their remaining in God and in Jesus Christ. He knew that idolatry (including mascots and talismans, fortune telling, and seeking to spirits and witches) had many subtle fascinations, whether for the lover seeking the love of his beloved, or the rich man seeking wealth, or the farmer seeking the fruitfulness of his fields, or the young man seeking strength and vigour. And they could seem so innocent. But they were dangerous, for they were the beginning of the slippery slope that led back to being in the arms of the Evil One. They took their eyes and their hearts away from God. And the false prophets too would seek to entangle them again in such things. For that was where all false religion led in the end (Rom 1:18-23). So let them guard themselves against idols, both visible and invisible, and keep themselves only to God.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

1Jn 5:21. Keep yourselves from idols “Upon the whole then, my dear children, whom I as affectionately love as a father does his tender babes, let all these considerations engage you to abstain from every appearance of fellowship with pagans in their idolatrous worship of false gods, from all use of images, as representations of the Deity, or as mediums of worship, and from every idol of your own hearts; and consider Christ as the true God (1Jn 5:20.), that you may be secured against idolatry in the worship which you pay to him. So may it be, to his and his Father’s glory, and to your own comfort and salvation! In testimony of my desire and hope of its being so, I heartily say, Amen!” It seems highly probable, from the connection, that falling into some acts of idolatry, such perhaps as feasting upon the heathen sacrifices, and even in the idols’ temple, were some of the crimes for which the Christians had been punished with extraordinary diseases: some unto death, and some not unto death. How amazing is it, that the church of Rome should so directly break the commands of God, by falling into idolatry in such a variety of kinds, and to so high a degree, when it was one grand design of the Jewish and Christian revelation to condemn idolatry, and banish it from the face of the earth! That corrupt church is, indeed, the mother of abominations, or of idolatries, and has taken in a great part of the ancient heathen superstition and idolatry; palliating it with the thin disguise of worshipping Christian saints instead of the ancient heathen gods.

Inferences.Let us regard the grand question, on which our life, our eternal life, is suspended! I mean, whether we have, or have not, the Son of God? Let us then examine into this important matter with the greater attention. Let us hearken to, and receive the testimony of God, as comprehended in this one word, that God hath given us, even to us, dying, perishing men, eternal life; and this life is in his Son. Let us receive this transcendent gift with all humility and thankfulness; and so much the rather, as it is given us in him. By firmly believing this, we shall conquer the world, and gain a victory of an infinitely different and more exalted nature, than they who are strangers to Christ, or who reject him, ever have done, or can possibly do.

May our steadfast faith in him furnish us with a substantial attestation that we are born of God; and may we prove it to be sincere, by loving the children of God, and by keeping all his commandments. We must surely acknowledge, that his commandments are reasonable; and if we have a genuine love to God existing in our hearts, it will render the observance of them pleasant and delightful. And if we are not possessed of that evidence of love, which arises from a disposition to obedience, let us remember, he has fairly and frequently warned us, that no other expressions of love, how fervent and pathetic soever, will be accepted or allowed by him. That our faith may be confirmed, and our love awakened, let us often look to Christ, as coming by water and by blood. Let us meditate on that mysterious stream of blood and water, which came forth from his wounded side. Let us solemnly remind ourselves of the baptismal water, in which we were washed, and of the sacred cup, the communion of the blood of Christ, referring to this great important event. And while we are contemplating the memorial of his humility, let us also consider him as one with the Father and the Holy Spirit; and as each of the sacred Three join their testimony to the truth of the gospel, and join their kind offices for supplying to us the invaluable blessings of it, let us joyfully ascribe glory to each, world without end. Amen.

REFLECTIONS.1st, The apostle shews, 1. The genuine marks of a child of God. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, the true Messiah, placing his whole dependance for pardon, life, and salvation, upon him, is born of God, adopted into his blessed family, and dignified with the title of a son and heir of the Almighty: and every one that loveth him that begat, the blessed God, the Author of all grace to his believing people, loveth him also that is begotten of him, and delights in his image wherever it appears.

2. By this we know that we love the children God, as his children, and purely for his sake, when we love God unfeignedly, and keep his commandments, from a principle of faith which worketh by love. For this is the love of God, the most undoubted evidence of it, that we keep his commandments; counting them all holy, just, and good, and having respect unto them without partiality or hypocrisy: and his commandments are not grievous; love makes the labour light, and the obedience cheerful and willing.

3. This is what will gain the conquest over an ensnaring world. For whatsoever is born of God, and partakes of a new and divine nature, overcometh the world, and triumphs over both its terrors and allurements: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith, which realizing unseen and eternal things, stamps vanity upon all present objects; and, deriving strength from the Redeemer’s fulness, enables us to be more than conquerors over all our trials. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? who, dependant upon him for life and salvation, holds on his heavenly way, and is neither to be seduced nor terrified from his holy profession? Lord, give and increase this victorious faith!

2nd, Faith in the divine Messiah, being of such essential consequence to our souls, we have the foundation on which this faith is built.
1. This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood: he at his baptism entered upon his office, and on the cross finished the great atonement; and the blood and water which flowed from his wounded side, declared the purposes of his coming, both to pay a ransom for our sins, and to cleanse us from the defilement of them, by the renovation of our natures through the mighty energy of his Spirit; for which glorious purpose faith looks to Jesus Christ, as appointed of the Father to his mediatorial office, and able and willing in these respects to perfect the salvation of his faithful people.

2. Christ has the strongest attestation borne to his divine person and character. It is the Spirit that beareth witness to the consciences of believers, and in the miraculous powers bestowed at that time on the ministers of the gospel; because the Spirit is truth itself, and his testimony cannot deceive. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; the Father, at his baptism and transfiguration, bore witness to the Son; the Son repeatedly asserted his own divine glory and office, and appealed to the miracles that he wrought, for a proof of the truth of what he advanced: the Holy Ghost, by his descent on Jesus at his baptism, and by the miraculous powers with which he invested the apostles and others, added his full attestation to the great Redeemer: and these three, though personally distinct, are in essence one. And there are three that bear witness in earth; the Spirit, in his gifts and graces; and the water, wherewith every believer is baptized in the name of the Son of God, as a divine Person (see the Annotations); and the blood, which Jesus shed upon the cross, and of which he instituted in his last supper a constant memorial to be observed in his church: and these three agree in one, and bear testimony to the divine character of our adored Immanuel, and to the complete Redemption provided by him for all his faithful saints. If we receive the witness of men, attesting any fact; and every court of human judicature admits their oath and evidence as satisfactory; the witness of God is greater, which Father, Son, and Spirit, severally bear to the dignity and glory of the Lord Jesus, and with whom the appointed witnesses on earth agree; for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his Son, as the true and divine Messiah, whom we by faith and love must embrace, and in whom alone salvation can be attained.

3rdly, We have,
1. The happy state of the true believer. He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself; he feels the suitableness of the Saviour to his state of guilt and misery, and knows, by happy experience, his excellence, fulness, and all-sufficiency: he walks in the light of the Son of God, and can say to him continually, My Lord, and, My God. He that believeth not God, and receiveth not his testimony concerning his only-begotten Son, hath made him a liar, and denied his truth, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son, and submits not to the witness which he hath borne to the character of Jesus as the true Messiah.

2. The Fountain of his felicity. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, the earnest and foretaste of it through the Redeemer’s infinite merit; and this life is in his Son, purchased by him, treasured up in him, and communicated from him to his believing people. He that hath the Son, who is by faith united to him, and interested in the merit of his Blood, hath life; hath spiritual life here, and possesses a title to eternal life hereafter; and he that hath not the Son of God, who does not by faith embrace him, and derive grace from him, and feel an interest in his death, hath not life, is more or less dead in trespasses and sins, and the wrath of God abideth upon him.

3. The knowledge which he has of his invaluable privileges. These things have I written unto you, that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, this glorious foretaste of it, and may rejoice in this excellent gift of God; and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God; engaged more steadfastly to cleave to him, and, with unshaken perseverance, maintaining your holy profession. Note; (1.) Those who have life in Christ Jesus, know it: the Lord seal this knowledge to our consciences! (2.) They who have begun well, should be encouraged to persevere, assured that, in this case, their labour shall not be in vain in the Lord.

4thly, The apostle adds, to all the other blessings flowing from faith in Christ,
1. Access to God in prayer, and the sure answer to all our petitions. And this is the confidence that we have in him, and the boldness to approach a throne of grace; that if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us; accepts our prayers, and will grant our requests. And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him, in manner, time, and measure bestowed, as he sees most for his own glory and our good. Note; (1.) If we would obtain an answer to our prayers, God’s revealed will must be the rule of them. (2.) When we pray in faith, we may confidently rest ourselves upon God’s promise: he will hear and help us.

2. Our prayers for others, as well as for ourselves, shall meet with kind acceptance. If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death; though it deserves death as its wages; he shall ask God to pardon his offending brother, and he shall, in answer to his prayer, give him life for them that sin not unto death. But see this subject fully considered in the Annotations.

5thly, The apostle concludes,
1. With a recapitulation of the believer’s privileges and practice. We know that whosoever is born of God, sinneth not, he cannot, as a child of God, wilfully sin; but he that is begotten of God, and is thus a partaker of a new and divine nature, keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not; the power of sin and Satan is broken, and he enjoys constant dominion over sin, and at least ardently longs for the entire annihilation of it.

2. He mentions their happy separation from the world. And we know that we are of God; his children, renewed in the spirit of our minds, and living separate from the corrupt mass of mankind: and the whole world, besides those who are born of God, lieth in wickedness, ( , ) in the wicked one, under his power, influence, and dominion, and must, if they die in this state, be condemned together with him. Note; It is most indubitably certain, that the far greater part of the world, even of the Christian world, lieth in wickedness; and as certain, that, if they die impenitent, they will perish everlastingly. It becomes us therefore seriously to inquire, whether we are of the world; for, if so, we must be condemned with the world.

3. They knew the Son of God, and enjoyed a blessed union with him. And we know that the Son of God is come, in the human nature, to take away our sins by the sacrifice of himself; and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, by his Spirit opening the eyes of our minds, and shining into our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of his glory: and we are in him that is true, vitally united to him who is the truth itself; even in his Son Jesus Christ, as living members of his mystical body. And this Jesus is the true God, the self-existent Jehovah, and eternal life; the purchaser, fountain, and bestower of it on all his faithful people; and they who perseveringly know him now by faith, will live eternally with him in glory. Note; Either Jesus Christ is the true God, or the Scriptures are a fiction.

*.* The Reader is referred to the different Authors mentioned often already.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

1Jn 5:21 . If believers have come to the true God through Christ, they have to take care that they do not lose this eternal and highest good by giving themselves up to any vain idol. In this train of thought John closes his Epistle with the short exhortation, so impressive, however, in its brevity: . In the address we may see the depth of the feeling with which John utters these concluding words.

are properly images; this signification is retained here by many commentators (Tertullian, Oecumenius, Lyranus, Lorinus, Salmeron, Lcke, Baumgarten-Crusius, Erdmann, Dsterdieck, etc.), whilst some of them, however, extend the idea to that of “false, heathen gods;” others, again, refer the expression to the arbitrary self-made representations of God which the false teachers had thus Bede, Rickli, Sander, Thiersch ( Versuch zur Herstellung , p. 241), etc.

Others combine both views, and understand by here all sorts of images which men arbitrarily make for themselves of God (Ebrard, Braune). If the warning is not to be regarded as a detached appendix, foreign to the contents of the Epistle, we cannot rest satisfied with the first interpretation. As the apostle, just in the antithesis to the false teachers, who belong to the , has so decidedly referred to the , he certainly has in view in this warning, if not altogether, yet principally, the untrue mental images of those teachers. [337] It is only if so taken that the warning to keep themselves from idols forms the appropriate conclusion of the whole Epistle.

[337] That the apostle here also means the res mundariae, inasmuch as man is attached to them (Myrberg), is so much the more improbable as the foregoing contains no reference to them.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

REFLECTIONS

Reader! how gracious was it in our God, to give his Church such tokens as are here marked down, in order that every child of God might know; his having been begotten, to the adoption of children in Jesus Christ. Yes! blessed God, we do know whose we are, and to whom we belong, by our being made believers in Christ Jesus. It is sweet, it is blessed, to know him, and to love him, and to delight in him, who came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ!

Glory be to the three heavenly witnesses, for their united testimony to the Son-ship of Jesus Christ! Lord! give all thy redeemed grace, to receive with holy joy, the record God hath given to his dear Son, and that eternal life which is in him. And oh! may every individual member of his mystical body, rejoice in Christ, and live by faith here, until he come to live in glory hereafter on Jesus, and eternal life in him.

Farewell, thou beloved disciple! we thank our God for his love to thee, and his employment of thee, and for all the benefit the Church hath derived under the Holy Ghost, from thee, in thy ministry. Shortly Jesus will come, and take home his Church, and the Lord shall be then seen, surrounded by his saints, with the whole redeemed Church of God, and all the disciples whom Jesus hath loved.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

Ver. 21. Keep yourselves from idols ] Negatively at least (as those 7000 in Israel, that had not bowed their knees to Baal), if not positively, by open declaration of your utter dislike, as did Daniel and his associates. Irenaeus reproveth the heretics called Gnostici, for that they carried about the image of Christ in Pilate’s time, after his own proportion; using also for declaration of their affection towards it, to set garlands upon the head of it; so soon crept this cursed sin into the primitive Church. Soon after the Council of Nice, arose a sharp contention between Irene the empress and her son Constantine VI, who destroyed images; for the which she unnaturally put out his eyes. About which time, as Eutropius writeth, the sun was darkened most terribly for 17 days together; God showing by that, how much he disliked those proceedings. Letters were sent by Queen Mary and her council, to examine Mr Flower why he wore about his neck written, Deum time, idolum fuge; Fear God and flee idolatry, to stir up Bishop Bonner to proceed against all that did the like. Arguments and authorities alleged by Bishop Ridley against images in churches may be read, Acts and Mon. fol. 1928, &c. Martin was much grieved that this sentence of St John was set in our churches, in the place where the rood loft a formerly stood.

a The cross upon which Christ suffered; the cross as the symbol of the Christian faith. Now only arch. D

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

21 .] Parting warning against idols . Little children (see reff. He parts from them with his warmest and most affectionate word of address), keep yourselves from idols (the is properly a figure of an imaginary deity, while an is that of some real person or thing made into an object of worship. So in an old Etymologicum ineditum in Biel sub voce (Dsterdieck), , . So Rom 1:23 , 1Co 10:19 ; 1Co 12:2 , and especially ref. 1 Thess., where, as here, is opposed to . And there seems no justification for the departing from the plain literal sense in this place. All around the Christian Church was heathenism: the born of God and the were the only two classes: those who went out of one, went into the other: God’s children are thus then finally warned of the consequence of letting go the only true God, in whom they can only abide by abiding in His Son Jesus Christ, in these solemn terms, to leave on their minds a wholesome terror of any the least deviation from the truth of God, seeing into what relapse it would plunge them. This is a more satisfactory view than that taken by Dsterdieck, that having so long and so much warned them against error in Christian doctrine, he could not part without also warning them against that of which they were indeed in less danger, relapse into heathenism: and far better than that of Hammond, al., that the were the fictions of Gnostic error).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

1Jn 5:21 . Filioli, custodite vos a simulacris (Vulg.). The exhortation arises naturally. “This” this God revealed and made near and sure in Christ “is the True God and Life Eternal. Cleave to Him, and do not take to do with false Gods: guard yourselves from the idols.” St. John is thinking, not of the heathen worship of Ephesus Artemis and her Temple, but of the heretical substitutes for the Christian conception of God. gives a tone of tenderness to the exhortation. is used of “guarding” a flock (Luk 2:8 ), a deposit or trust (1Ti 6:20 ; 2Ti 1:12 ; 2Ti 1:14 ), a prisoner (Act 12:4 ). “watch from within ”; (see note on 1Jn 2:3 ), “watch from without ”. Thus, when a city is besieged, the garrison , the besiegers . The heart is a citadel, and it must be guarded against insidious assailants from without. Not , “be on your guard,” but , aor. marking a crisis. The Cerinthian heresy was a desperate assault demanding a decisive repulse.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

1 John

THE LAST WORDS OF THE LAST APOSTLE

1Jn 5:20-21

So the Apostle ends his letter. These words are probably not only the close of this epistle, but the last words, chronologically, of Scripture. The old man gathers together his ebbing force to sum up his life’s work in a sentence, which might be remembered though much else was forgotten. Last words stick. Perhaps, too, some thought of future generations, to whom his witness might come, passed across his mind. At all events, some thought that we are here listening to the last words of the last Apostle may well be in ours. You will observe that, in this final utterance, the Apostle drops the triumphant ‘we know,’ which we have found in previous sermons reiterated with such emphasis. He does so, not because he doubted that all his brethren would gladly attest and confirm what he was about to say, but because it was fitting that his last words should be his very own; the utterance of personal experience, and weighty with it, and with apostolic authority. So he smelts all that he had learned from Christ, and had been teaching for fifty years, into that one sentence. The feeble voice rings out clear and strong; and then softens into tremulous tones of earnest exhortation, and almost of entreaty. The dying light leaps up in one bright flash: the lamp is broken, but the flash remains. And if we will let it shine into our lives, we shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.

I. Here we have the sum of all that we need to know about God.

‘This is the true God.’ The first question is, What or whom does John mean by ‘this’?

Grammatically, we may refer the word to the immediately preceding name, Jesus Christ. But it is extremely improbable that the Apostle should so suddenly shift his point of view, as he would do if, having just drawn a clear distinction between ‘Him that is true,’ and the Christ who reveals Him, he immediately proceeded to apply the former designation to Jesus Christ Himself. It is far more in accordance with his teaching, and with the whole scope of the passage, if by ‘ this’ we understand the Father of whom he has just been speaking. It is no tautology that he reiterates in this connection that He is ‘ true.’ For he has separated now his own final attestation from the common consciousness of the Christian community with which he has previously been dealing. And when he says, ‘This is the true God’ he means to say, ‘ This God of whom I have been affirming that Jesus Christ is His sole Revealer, and of whom I have been declaring that through Jesus Christ we may know Him and dwell abidingly in Him,’’ this’-and none else-’ is the true God.’

Then the second question that I have to answer briefly is, what does John mean by ‘true’? I had occasion, in a previous sermon on the foregoing words, to point out that by that expression he means, whenever he uses it, some person or thing whose nature and character correspond to his or its name, and who is essentially and perfectly that which the name expresses. If we take that as the signification of the word, we just come to this, that the final assertion into which the old Apostle flings all his force, and which he wishes to stand out prominent as his last word to his brethren and to the world, is that the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and with whom a man through Jesus Christ may have fellowship of knowledge and friendship-that He and none but He answers to all that men mean when they speak of a God; that He, if I might use such an expression, fully fills the part.

Brethren, if we but think that, however it comes no matter about that, every man has in him a capacity of conceiving of a perfect Being, of righteousness, power, purity, and love, and that all through the ages of the world’s yearnings there has never been presented to it the realization of that dim conception, but that all idolatry, all worship, has failed in bodying out a Person who would answer to the requirements of a man’s spirit, then we come to the position in which these final words of the old fisherman go down to a deeper depth than all the world’s wisdom, and carry a message of consolation and a true gospel to be found nowhere besides.

Whatsoever embodiments men may have tried to give to their dim conception of a God, these have been always limitations, and often corruptions, of it. And to limit or to separate is, in this case, to destroy. No pantheon can ever satisfy the soul of man who yearns for One Person in whom all that he can dream of beauty, truth, and goodness shall be ensphered. A galaxy of stars, white as the whitest spot in the Milky Way, can never be a substitute for the sun. ‘This is the true God’; and all others are corruptions, or limitations, or divisions, of the indissoluble unity.

Then, are men to go for ever and ever with ‘the blank misgivings of a creature, moving about in worlds not realized’? Is it true that I can fancy some one far greater than is? Is it true that my imagination can paint a nobler form than reality acknowledges? It is so, alas! unless we take John’s swan-song and last testimony as true, and say:-This God, manifest in Jesus Christ, on whose heart I can lay my head, and into whose undying and unstained light I can gaze, and in whose righteousness I can participate, this God is the real God; no dream, no projection from my own nature, magnified and cleansed, and thrown up first from the earth that it may come down from heaven, but the reality, of whom all human imaginations are but the faint transcripts, though they be the faithful prophets.

For, consider what it is that the world owes to Jesus Christ, in its knowledge of God. Remember that to us orphaned men He has come and said, as none ever said, and showed as none ever showed: ‘Ye are not fatherless; there is a Father in the heavens.’ Consider that to the world, sunk in sense and flesh, and blotting its most radiant imaginations of the Divine by some veil and hindrance, of corporeity and materialism, He comes, and has said, ‘God is a Spirit.’ Consider that, taught of Him, this Apostle, to whom was committed the great distinction of in monosyllables preaching central truths and in words that a child can apprehend, setting forth the depths that eternity and angels cannot comprehend, has said, ‘God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.’ And consider that he has set the apex on the shining pyramid, and spoken the last word when he has told us, ‘God is Love.’ And put these four revelations together, the Father; Spirit; unsullied Light; absolutely Love; and then let us bow down and say, ‘Thou hast said the truth, O aged Seer. This is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This-and none beside-is the true God,’ I know not what the modern world is to do for a God if it drifts away from Jesus Christ and His revelations. I know that it is always a dangerous way of arguing to try to force people upon alternatives, one of which is so repellent as to compel them to cling to the other. But it does seem to me that the whole progress of modern thought, with the advancement of modern physical science, and other branches of knowledge which perhaps are not yet to be called science, are all steadily converging on forcing us to this choice -will you have God in Christ, or, will you wander about in a Godless world, and for your highest certitude have to say,’ Perhaps’? ‘This is the true God,’ and if we go away from Him I do not know where we are to go.

II. Here we have the sum of His gifts to us.

‘This is the true God, and eternal life.’ Now, let us distinctly and emphatically put first that what is here declared is primarily something about God, and not about His gift to men; and that the two clauses, ‘the true God,’ and ‘eternal life,’ stand in precisely the same relation to the preceding words, ‘This is.’ That is to say, the revelation which John would lay upon our hearts, that from it there may spring up in them a wondrous hope, is that, in His own essential self, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and brought into living fellowship with us by Him, is ‘eternal life.’ By ‘eternal life’ he means something a great deal more august than endless existence. He means a life which not only is not ended by time, but which is above time, and not subject to its conditions at all. Eternity is not time spun out for ever. And so we are not lifted up into a region where there is little light, but where the very darkness is light, just as the curtain was the picture, in the old story of the painter,

That seems to part us utterly from God. He is ‘eternal life’; then, we poor creatures down here, whose being is all ‘cribbed, cabined, and confined’ by succession, and duration, and the partitions of time, what can we have in common with Him? John answers for us. For, remember that in the earlier part of this epistle he writes that ‘the life was manifested, and we shew unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,’ and ‘we declare it unto you; that ye also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son.’ So, then, strange as it is, and beyond our thoughts as it is, there may pass into creatures that very eternal life which is in God, and was manifested in Jesus. We have to think of Him because we know Him to be love, as in essence self-communicating, and whatsoever a creature can receive, a loving Father, the true God, will surely give.

But we are not left to wander about in regions of mysticism and darkness. For we know this, that however strange and difficult the thought of eternal life as possessed by a creature may be, to give it was the very purpose for which Jesus Christ came on earth. ‘I am that Bread of Life.’ ‘I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.’ And we are not left to grope in doubt as to what that eternal life consists in; for He has said:’ This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.’ Nor are we left in any more doubt as to that bond by which the whole fullness of this Divine gift may flow into a man’s spirit. For over and over again the Master Himself has declared, ‘He that believeth hath everlasting life.’

Thus, then, there is a life which belongs to God on His throne, a life lifted above the limitations of time, a life communicated by Jesus Christ, as the waters of some land-locked lake may flow down through a sparkling river, a life which consists in fellowship with God, a life which may be, and is, ours, on the simple condition of trusting Him who gives it, and a life which, eternal as it is, and destined to a glory all undreamed of, in that future beyond the grave, is now the possession of every man that puts forth the faith which is its condition. ‘He that believeth hath’-not shall have, in some distant future, but has to-day-’everlasting life,’ verily here and now. And so John lays this upon our hearts, as the ripe fruit of all his experience, and the meaning of all his message to the world, that God revealed in Christ ‘is the true God,’ and as Himself the possessor, is the source for us all, of life eternal.

III. Lastly, we have here the consequent sum of Christian effort.

‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols,’ seeing that ‘this is the true God,’ the only One that answers to your requirements, and will satisfy your desires. Do not go rushing to these shrines of false deities that crowd every corner of Ephesus-ay, and every corner of Manchester. For what does John mean by an idol? Does he mean that barbarous figure of Diana that stood in the great temple, hideous and monstrous? No! He means anything, or any person, that comes into the heart and takes the place which ought to be filled by God, and by Him only. What I prize most, what I trust most utterly, what I should be most forlorn if I lost; what is the working aim of my life, and the hunger of my heart-that is my idol. We all know that.

Is the exhortation not needed, my brother? In Ephesus it was hard to have nothing to do with heathenism. In that ancient world their religion, though it was a superficial thing, was intertwined with daily life in a fashion that puts us to shame. Every meal had its libation, and almost every act was knit by some ceremony or other to a god. So that Christian men and women had almost to go out of the world, in order to be free from complicity in the all-pervading idol-worship. Now, although the form has changed, and the fascinations of old idolatry belong only to a certain stage in the world’s culture and history, the temptation to idolatry remains just as subtle, just as all-pervasive, and the yielding to it just as absurd. You and I call ourselves Christians. We say we believe that there is nothing else, and nobody else, in the whole sweep of the universe that can satisfy our hearts, or be what our imagination can conceive, but God only. Having said that on the Sunday, what about Monday? They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and hewed to themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water.’ ‘Little children’-for we are scarcely more mature than that-’little children, keep yourselves from idols.’

And how is it to be done? ‘Keep yourselves.’ Then you can do it, and you have to make a dead lift of effort, or be sure of this-that the subtle seduction will slide into your heart, and before you know it, you will be out of God’s sanctuary, and groveling in Diana’s temple. But it is not only our own effort that is needed, for just a sentence or two before, the Apostle had said: ‘He that is born of God ‘-that is, Christ- ‘keepeth us.’ So our keeping of ourselves is essentially our letting Him keep us. Stay inside the walls of the citadel, and you need not be afraid of the besiegers; go outside by letting your faith flag, and you will be captured or killed. Keep yourselves by clinging ‘to Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless.’ Make experience by fellowship with Him who is the only true God, and able to satisfy your whole nature, mind, heart, will, and these false deities, the whole rabble of them, will have no power to tempt you to bow the knee.

Brethren! Here is the sum of the whole matter. There is one truth on which we can stay our hearts, one God in whom we can utterly trust, the God revealed in Jesus Christ. If we do not see Him in Christ, we shall not see Him at all, but wander about all our days in a world empty of solid reality. There is one gift which will satisfy all our needs, the gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. There is one practical injunction which will save us from many a heartache, and which our weakness can never afford to neglect, and that is to keep ourselves from all false worship. These golden words of my text, in their simplicity, in their depth, in their certainty, in their comprehensiveness, are worthy to be the last words of Revelation; and to stand to all the world, through all ages, as the shining apex, or the solid foundation, or the central core of Christianity. ‘This’-this, and none else- ‘is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: 1Jn 5:21

21Little children, guard yourselves from idols.

1Jn 5:21

NASB”guard yourselves from idols”

NKJV, NRSV”keep yourselves from idols”

TEV”keep yourselves safe from false gods!”

NJB”be on guard against false gods”

This is an aorist active imperative, an emphatic general truth. This refers to the Christians’ active participation in the sanctification (cf. 1Jn 3:3), which they are already enjoying in Jesus Christ (cf. Eph 1:4; 1Pe 1:5).

The term idols (which is used only twice in John’s writings, here and in an OT quote in Rev 9:20), either relates to the teachings and lifestyles of the false teachers, or because the Dead Sea Scrolls use this term in the sense of “sin,” the terms “idol” and “sin” may be synonymous.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Little children. App-108.

keep = guard, as Jud 1:24.

from. App-104.

idols. As in 1Co 8:4. An idol may not be a material one, but may consist in whatever a man looks to for help, apart from the Living God. See Eph 5:6. Col 3:5.

Amen. The texts omit.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

21.] Parting warning against idols. Little children (see reff. He parts from them with his warmest and most affectionate word of address), keep yourselves from idols (the is properly a figure of an imaginary deity,-while an is that of some real person or thing made into an object of worship. So in an old Etymologicum ineditum in Biel sub voce (Dsterdieck),- , . So Rom 1:23, 1Co 10:19; 1Co 12:2, and especially ref. 1 Thess., where, as here, is opposed to . And there seems no justification for the departing from the plain literal sense in this place. All around the Christian Church was heathenism: the born of God and the were the only two classes: those who went out of one, went into the other: Gods children are thus then finally warned of the consequence of letting go the only true God, in whom they can only abide by abiding in His Son Jesus Christ, in these solemn terms,-to leave on their minds a wholesome terror of any the least deviation from the truth of God, seeing into what relapse it would plunge them. This is a more satisfactory view than that taken by Dsterdieck, that having so long and so much warned them against error in Christian doctrine, he could not part without also warning them against that of which they were indeed in less danger, relapse into heathenism:-and far better than that of Hammond, al., that the were the fictions of Gnostic error).

Fuente: The Greek Testament

1Jn 5:21. , keep yourselves) in my absence, that no one deceive you. The elegance of the active verb with the reciprocal pronoun is more expressive than , be on your guard. See on Chrysostom de Sacerd. p. 423.- , from idols) and not only from their worship, but also from all communion and appearance of communion with them: Rev 2:14; Rev 2:20.[27]

[27] Bengel, J. A. (1866). Vol. 5: Gnomon of the New Testament (M. E. Bengel & J. C. F. Steudel, Ed.) (W. Fletcher, Trans.) (111-154). Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

The Peril of Idolatry

My little children, guard yourselves from idols.1Jn 5:21.

These would seem to be the last words of Scripture that were written, the last charge of the last Apostle, the last solemn warning in which the Holy Spirit sums up the Gospel for all generations. Yet they sound strange. Surely we have no idols. What need have we of such a charge as this?

Not much, if wood and stone are needed to make an idol; but if we are putting anything whatever in Gods place, we are not so clear. Some calling themselves Christians have worshipped saints on every high hill and under every green tree; some have made the Church an idol, and some the Bible; some have made money their god, others have worshipped success, and others have sold themselves for pleasure.1 [Note: H. M. Gwatkin, The Eye for Spiritual Things, 91.]

It may well be that the Spirit had brought before St. Johns mind the danger arising from the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, was spoken of to them as a man like themselves; a fact that might lead them from the Deity of the man Christ Jesus to deifying other creatures, and investing these with Divine attributes, and attributing to them Divine power, and approaching them with prayer and praise, which, though fitting worship in the case of Jesus Christ, would be idolatry addressed to other creatures. And so St. John adds these words to the end of his Epistle, lest the doctrine he had just insisted on should be misused and perverted, as indeed we know from Church history it has been.2 [Note: W. E. Jelf, A Commentary on the First Epistle of St. John, 82.]

I

Tendencies to Idolatry

1. Man everywhere has some appreciation of the spiritual. We may describe it as we will, but everywhere man is conscious of it, in some form or fashion. If we take the lowest form of that conception of which we know anything, that which is called fetish worship, what is the root idea? It is a recognition of the spiritual, it is an expression of fear. A fetish worshipper, if he be unaccompanied by his fetish, will refuse to trade with you, will refuse to have any dealings with you. Why? Because he thinks that the carrying of his particular fetish keeps away evil spirits. His conception of the supernatural is the conception of antagonistic forces, and he endeavours to charm them away. All charms, all necromancy, all attempts to avert some catastrophe by this kind of thing, are of the same nature. They are a recognition of that which is beyond. And it is not only a recognition of the spiritual as beyond the material; it is also a recognition of relationship of some kind. Idolatry is always born out of this recognition, and out of a consciousness of need. The need is an anxiety. It may simply be a need of protection, or it may be a need of communion; but whether this or that, every idol is a demonstration of the Divine origin of man. As St. Augustine said long ago, God has made the human heart so that it can never find rest save in Himself. After that rest humanity everywhere is seeking, and all idolatry is a demonstration of the search.

When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Strasbourg with immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious decorators, would suppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sitting in the Place de la Concorde. The figure was delightful to them as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about Strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to be Strasbourg.

Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue purporting to represent a river instead of a city,the Rhine, or Garonne, suppose,and have been touched with strong emotion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instant that the statue was the river.

And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they might take delight in the beautiful image of a god, because it gathered and perpetuated their thoughts about that god; and yet never suppose, nor be capable of being deceived by any arguments into supposing, that the statue was the god.

On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in the sight of a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it aside in some, to him, sacred place, and believe the stone itself to be a kind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it.

In like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, such, for instance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, he would be apt to regard in the same way; and very possibly also construct for himself frightful idols of some kind, calculated to produce upon him a vague impression of their being alive; whose imaginary anger he might deprecate or avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in them any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature.1 [Note: Ruskin, Aratra Pentelici (Works, xx. 229).]

2. Man must have a God, and when he loses the vision of the true God, he makes a God for himself. The making of idols is an attempt to find God, and God is always built up out of the imagination, and according to the pattern of the builder himself. Every idol is the result of a conception of God which is the magnified personal self-consciousness of the man who creates his idol. Or to put it in another form, idolatry is self-projection. First man imagines his God, and the God he imagines is himself enlarged. Eyes have they, noses have they, hands have they, feet have they. The Psalmist in those words took the physical facts, and showed how man in making a God projects his own personality; and calls that magnified personality God. It is seen at once that the result is magnified failure, intensified evil. So all human conditions which are evil, being active in the thinking of the man who would construct his deity, are to be found intensified in that deity. To go back to the Old Testament, we have Baal, Molech, and all the evil deities. What are they but the evil things of humanity magnified? And so everywhere we find that men have made idols according to their own understanding.

Dear God and Father of us all

Forgive our faith in cruel lies,

Forgive the blindness that denies,

Forgive Thy creature, when he takes

For the all-perfect love Thou art

Some grim creation of his heart.

Cast down our idols; overturn

Our bloody altars: let us see

Thyself in Thy humanity.

3. The whole history of the Jews, of which the Bible is the record, is one long warning and protest against idolatry. Abraham became the father of the faithful because he obeyed the call of God to abandon the idols which his fathers had worshipped beyond the Euphrates. Jacob made his family bury under the Terebinth of Shechem their Syrian amulets and Syrian gods. But Israel was constantly starting aside into idolatry like a broken bow. Even in the wilderness they took up the tabernacle of Molech, and the star of their god Remphan, idols which they had made to worship. Even under the burning crags of Sinai, they made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image; and for centuries afterwards the apostate kings of northern Israel doubled that sin in Dan and Bethel.

The seven servitudes of the Book of Judges were the appropriate retribution for seven apostasies. From Solomon to Manasseh, king after king, even of Judah, forsook Jehovah. Then came the crashing blow of the Exile, the utter ruin of every hope of domination or of independence. The agony of being thus torn from their temple and their home and the land they loved cured them forever of material idolatry; but they fell headlong into another and subtler idolatrythe idolatry of forms and ceremonies, the idolatry of the dead letter of their law. Pharisaism was only a new idolatry, and it was, in some respects, more dangerous than the old. It was more dangerous because more self-satisfied, more hopelessly impenitent; more dangerous because, being idolatry, it passed itself off as the perfection of faithful worship. Hence it plunged them into a yet deadlier iniquity. Baal worshippers had murdered the Prophets; Pharisees crucified the Lord of Life.

4. What gives this tendency its strength? The Jews were tempted to worship these idols because they saw in the lives of the nations around them that emancipation from shame, from conscience, from restraint, from the stern and awful laws of morality, for which all bad men sigh. They longed for that slavery of sin which would be freedom from righteousness. It was not the revolting image of Molech that allured them; it was the spirit of hatred, the fierce delight of the natural wild beast which lurks in the human heart. Molech was but the projection into the outward of ghastly fears born of mans own guilt; the consequent impulse to look on God as a wrathful, avenging Being, to be propitiated only by human agony and human blood; and as One whom (so whispered to them a terrified selfishness) it was better to propitiate by passing their children through the fire than to let themselves suffer from His rage. It was not any image of Mammon that allured them to worship that abject spirit. It was the love of money, which is a root of all evil; it was covetousness, which is idolatry. And why should they worship the degraded Baal-Peor? Just because he was degraded; just because of those wanton rites which cost them woe.

Idolatry, kneeling to a monster. The contrary of Faithnot want of Faith. Idolatry is faith in the wrong thing, and quite distinct from Faith in No thing, the Dixit Insipiens. Very wise men may be idolaters, but they cannot be atheists.1 [Note: Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens (Works, xxxiii. 154).]

Do these tendencies not reveal themselves still? Is it not possible that we form to ourselves false conceptions of God? We think of Him on the one hand as a self-willed despot, or we think of Him on the other hand as a sentimental father, who has within Him no power of anger or of passion. Again, have we not thought of Him too often as an indifferent proprietor,forgive the homeliness of the figure of speech,an absentee landlord, who collects rents on Sundays, and cares nothing about what happens to His property during the week? How often shall we have to plead guilty to this charge, that we have a god to suit our own convenience; that we accommodate the doctrine of God which the Bible contains, and which Jesus uttered finally for the world, to our own low level of life; that we have allowed our selfishness to blur the vision of God, and to make or create a new god according to our own understanding?2 [Note: G. Campbell Morgan.]

II

Forms of Idolatry

1. Idolatry manifests itself at times in gross and material forms.What was the sin of Jeroboam? That he set up golden images at Dan and Bethel, and in doing so provided for the people a representation of God. When Jeroboam set up those golden images, he had no idea of setting up new gods. That was not the sin of Jeroboam. In the wilderness, when the men, waiting for Moses, according to the ancient story, made a golden calf, they were not making any new god. When we read the story carefully, we discover that they were making a likeness of Jehovah, and when they had made their golden calf and bowed themselves before it, they observed a feast of Jehovah. That was the sin of Jeroboam also; not the setting up of a new deity, not the introduction into the national life of a god borrowed from surrounding countries, but an attempt to help Israel to know Jehovah by a likeness, a representation of Him which should be set up at Dan and Bethel. In so doing, Jeroboam was not breaking the first commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods, but the second, Thou shalt not make any likeness of God.

We go a little further on in the history of Israel, and we find Ahab. The sin of Ahab was different from Jeroboams in that he introduced other deities and placed them beside Jehovah. He built temples for Baal and established the worship of Baal. That was not a representation of Jehovah, but another deity. The sin of Ahab was that he broke the first of the words of the Decalogue. The breach of the second word of the Decalogue always precedes the breach of the first in the history of believing peoples. First, something to set up to help us to see and understand God; and then presently other gods usurping the place of God. First, a false conception of God, and we worship it; secondly, some other deity by the side of God.

Dr. Buchanan, who was an eye-witness of the worship of Juggernaut in India, describes what he saw. The Temple of Juggernaut has been standing for eight or nine hundred years. The idol is like a man, with large diamonds for eyes; with a black face, and a mouth foaming with blood. Well, he says he saw this idol put upon a large carriage, nine or ten times as high as the biggest man one ever saw. And then the men, women and children (tens and hundreds of thousands were there together) began to draw the carriage along. The wheels made deep marks in the ground as it went along. And here there was a man who lay down before it, and the wheels went over him and killed him on the spot. And again there was a woman, who in the same way lay down before the idol, thinking she was sure to get to heaven if she was crushed beneath that idols carriage wheels. And he saw children there drawing the idol. And he tells about two little children sitting crying beside their dying mother, who had come to the city of the idol, and perished there from fatigue and want. And when they were asked where their home was, they said they had no home but where their mother was. And that mother was dying before her time because of her idolatry. Well might he have told such little ones how foolish and how wrong such conduct was, and said to them, Little children, keep yourselves from idols.1 [Note: W. H. Gray, The Childrens Friend, 111.]

As we were preparing a foundation for the Church, a huge and singular-looking round stone was dug up, at sight of which the Tannese stood aghast. The eldest Chief said,

Missi, that stone was either brought there by Karapanamun (the Evil Spirit), or hid there by our great Chief who is dead. That is the Stone God to which our forefathers offered human sacrifices; these holes held the blood of the victim till drunk up by the Spirit. The Spirit of that stone eats up men and women and drinks their blood, as our fathers taught us. We are in greatest fear!

A Sacred Man claimed possession, and was exceedingly desirous to carry it off; but I managed to keep it, and did everything in my power to show them the absurdity of these foolish notions. Idolatry had not, indeed, yet fallen throughout Tanna, but one cruel idol, at least, had to give way for the erection of Gods House on that benighted land.2 [Note: John G. Paton, i. 201.]

2. There is also an intellectual idolatry when our own false notions are allowed to usurp the place of truth. The first meaning of the word idols is false, shadowy, fleeting images; subjective phantoms; wilful illusions; cherished fallacies. This is the sense in which the word is used by our great English philosopher, Lord Bacon. He speaks of idols of the tribe, false notions which seem inherent in the nature of man, and which, like an unequal mirror mingling its own nature with that of the light, distort and refract it. There are also idols of the cave. Every man has in his heart some secret cavern in which an idol lurks, reared there by his temperament or his training, and fed with the incense of his passions, so that a man, not seeking God in His word or works, but only in the microcosm of his own heart, thinks of God not as He is, but as he chooses to imagine Him to be. And there are idols of the market-place, false conceptions of God which spring from mens intercourse with one another, and from the fatal force of words. And there are idols of the school, false notions which come from the spirit of sect, and system, and party, and formal theology.

All sin is an untruth, a defiance of the true order of earth and heaven. In one of Horts great sayings, Every thought which is base or vile or selfish is first of all untrue. These are the idols from which we have to keep ourselves. Whatever you think of God in your inmost heart, you will live accordingly. Whatever idol you make Him into, that idol will make you like itself.1 [Note: H. M. Gwatkin, The Eye for Spiritual Things, 94.]

George Herbert says that if you look on the pane of glass in a window, you may either let your eye rest on the glass, or you may look through the glass at the blue heaven beyond it. Now Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are windows through which we may see God. But, on the other hand, just as a man who looks at a window may let his eye rest on the pane of glass, instead of using the glass as a medium through which he can look at the glowing scene beyond, so we may allow our minds to rest on Beauty, or Truth, or Goodness, instead of using these as media through which to contemplate God.2 [Note: Hugh Price Hughes, The Philanthropy of God, 229.]

Like all those who find their vent in Art, Jenny Lind seemed always as if her soul was a homeless stranger here amid the thick of earthly affairs, never quite comprehending why the imperfect should exist, never quite able to come down from the lighted above and form her eyes to the twilight of the prison and the cave.3 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 18.]

3. But most frequently idolatry assumes a practical shape.What does St. John mean by an idol? Does he mean that barbarous figure of Diana which stood in the great temple, hideous and monstrous? No! he means anything, or any person, that comes into the heart and takes the place which ought to be filled by God, and by Him only. What I prize most, what I trust most utterly, what I should be most forlorn if I lost, what is the working aim of my heartthat is my idol. In Ephesus it was difficult to have nothing to do with heathenism. In that ancient world their religion, though it was a superficial thing, was intertwined with daily life in a fashion that puts us to shame. Every meal had its libation, and almost every act was knit by some ceremony or other to a god; so that Christian men and women had almost to go out of the world, in order to be free from complicity in the all-pervading idol-worship. Now, although the form has changed, and the fascinations of old idolatry belong only to a certain stage in the worlds culture and history, the temptation to idolatry remains just as subtle, just as all-pervasive, and the yielding to it just as absurd.

Just consider what your feelings would be, were a heathen king to conquer this land, and to set up the images of his gods in the beautiful cathedral at Salisbury, where so many generations have been accustomed to worship God and His Son. Yet the heart of a Christian is far more beautiful, and far more precious, and far dearer to God, than that cathedral. The cathedral at Salisbury will not last for ever; Christ did not die for it, He did not purchase it with His own blood. But us He has bought; for us He has paid a price, that we might be His for all eternity. What, then, must be His feelings, to see His own hearts defiled and polluted by being given up to idols?1 [Note: A. W. Hare, The Alton Sermons, 493.]

Hear, Father! hear and aid!

If I have loved too well, if I have shed,

In my vain fondness, oer a mortal head

Gifts, on Thy shrine, my God, more fitly laid,

If I have sought to live

But in one light, and made a mortal eye

The lonely star of my idolatry,

Thou that art Love, oh! pity and forgive!2 [Note: Mrs. Hemans.]

Many people spend their life as some African tribes do,constructing idols, finding they are not the oracles they fancied, and breaking them in pieces to seek others. They have an uninteresting succession of perfect friends and infallible teachers. How many need the angels word, See thou do it not.3 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 3.]

I went out into the garden to walk before dinner, and with difficulty refrained my tears to think how oft and with what sweet delight I had borne my dear, dear boy along that walk, with my dear wife at my side; but had faith given me to see his immortality in another world, and rest satisfied with my Makers will. Sir Peter Lawrie called after dinner, and besought me, as indeed have many, to go and live with him; but nothing shall tempt me from this sweet solitude of retirement, and activity of consolation, and ministry to the afflicted. When he was gone I went forth upon my outdoor ministry, and as I walked to Mr. Whytes, along the terraces overlooking those fields where we used to walk, three in one, I was sore, sore distressed, and found the temptation to idolatry of the memory; which the Lord delivered me fromat the same time giving the clue to the subject which has been taking form in my mind lately, to be treated as arising out of my trial; and the form in which it presented itself is the idolatry of the affections, which will embrace the whole evil, the whole remedy, and the sound condition of all relations.1 [Note: The Life of Edward Irving, i. 258.]

4. But we must not imagine that God calls upon us to hide every sign of affection.It is true that Jesus said He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; but He also denounced those Pharisees who refused to help their parents under the pretence that they gave so liberally to the Temple treasury.

William Black, in his story In Far Lochaber, describes a household where every natural instinct was repressed as being in itself something lawless; where the father held that he could not love God truly if he showed any demonstrative affection for his children. In his own early home in Glasgow, Black had been brought up in that way. There was genuine family affection but no outward token of it. He revolted from that afterwards, very naturally, and the training of his own three children was very different. But that was the old Scottish idea, having its root in religionKeep yourselves from idols. Mothers, losing a child, have sometimes said, I made too much of an idol of my child, and God has punished me by taking it away. No, no. Do not hide, do not limit natural affection in the name of religion. You make an idol of your child if you would do anything dishonourable for the childs sake; if you say, as it were, my love for the child justifies me; or if you spoil the child by over-indulgence, or by want of rebuke when it does wrong. But do not in the name of religion hide or diminish the tokens of affection. There cannot be too much of that in the home life.

I took the poker, a few minutes before writing this, to break a piece of coal on the fire, and got a painful shock. I struck again, and struck harder, without feeling anything. I had struck the second time in the right place, about a third from the end of the poker. And human love may be more manifested, instead of less, when the love of God is at the root of it. The tokens of the earthly love will not then by any means injure or impair the heavenly.

I could not love thee, dear, so much

Loved I not honour more.1 [Note: John S. Maver.]

We cannot know or enjoy or love the world too much, if Gods will controls us. Has a mother anything but joy in watching the little daughters devotion to her doll? Not until the child is so absorbed that she cannot hear her mothers voice. Did anyone ever love the world more than Jesus did? Yet was anyone ever so loyal to the Fathers will? Worldliness is not love of the world but slavishness to it.2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 10.]

III

Defence against Idolatry

How are we to guard ourselves against idols? What is the defence?

1. We must cherish the vision of the true God and eternal life.We have that vision in Christ. If I would know God, I must see Him in Christ. And if the God I am worshipping is any other than the Christ who came to reveal Him then the God I am worshipping is not the true God, and I have become an idolater. We cannot see God, cannot apprehend God, save as by the revelation that He has made of Himself. In that holy and infinite mystery of incarnation there is an adaptation of God Himself to mans own method of finding God.

2. Another defence will be found in our love of truth.It is not by learning or by culture or even by worship that we come to the knowledge of God. The utmost that even worship can do is to cleanse us for our higher dutiesthose duties of common life in which our God reveals Himself, in joy and sorrow, in sickness and in health alike. Even the Supper of the Lord would be a mockery, if Christ were not as near us in every other work of truth we do. Only let us be true, true in every fibre of our being, and truth of thought shall cleanse our eyes to see the truth of God which is the light of life.

The easiest lesson in the school of truth is to do our work in the spirit of truth. Petty as it may seem, it is the earthward end of a ladder that reaches up to heaven. It is a greater work to give the cup of cold water than raise the dead. Our single duty here on earth is to bend all our heart and all our soul and all our mind to the single task of learning the love of truth, for the love of truth is the love of God.1 [Note: H. M. Gwatkin, The Eye for Spiritual Things, 94.]

3. But it is not only our own effort that is needed; for just a sentence or two before, the Apostle had said: He that is born of Godthat is, Christkeepeth us. So our keeping of ourselves is essentially our letting Him keep us. Stay inside the walls of the citadel, and you need not be afraid of the besiegers; go outside by letting your faith flag, and you will be captured or killed. Keep yourselves by clinging to him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless. Seek fellowship with Him who is the only true God, and is able to satisfy your whole nature, mind, heart, will; and these false deities will have no power to tempt you to bow the knee.

The Lord thy Keeper, then: tis writ for thee,

By night and day, wayworn and feeble sheep!

Without, within, He shall thy Guardian be;

And een to endless ages He shall keep

Thy wandering heart.

The Peril of Idolatry

Literature

Aked (C. F.), Old Events and Modern Meanings, 119, 135, 151, 167.

Colenso (J. W.), Natal Sermons, ii. 329.

Cornaby (W. A.), In Touch with Reality, 11.

Darlow (T. H.), The Upward Calling, 23.

Dykes (J. O.), The Law of the Ten Words, 53.

Farrar (F. W.), Sermons and Addresses in America, 164.

Figgis (J. B.), The Anointing, 79.

Goodwin (H.), University Sermons, ii. 32.

Gray (W. H.), The Childrens Friend, 111.

Gwatkin (H. M.), The Eye for Spiritual Things, 89.

Hare (A. W.), Sermons, ii. 327.

Hare (A. W.), The Alton Sermons, 487.

Henson (H. H.), Ad Rem, 121.

Hughes (H. P.), The Philanthropy of God, 223.

Hunt (A. N.), Sermons for the Christian Year, ii. 10.

Jerdan (C.), Gospel Milk and Honey, 326.

Maclaren (A.), Triumphant Certainties, 31.

Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, ii. 300.

Stanley (A. P.), Sermons for Children, 10.

Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Mission Sermons for a Year, 381.

Christian World Pulpit, lxvi. 401 (Henson); lxix. 232, 259, 325, 403 (Aked).

Church of England Pulpit, lxiii. (1908) 483 (Bernard).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

Little: 1Jo 2:1

keep: Exo 20:3, Exo 20:4, 1Co 10:7, 1Co 10:14, 2Co 6:16, 2Co 6:17, Rev 9:20, Rev 13:14, Rev 13:15, Rev 14:11

Amen: Mat 6:13

Reciprocal: Exo 20:23 – General Lev 19:4 – General Deu 4:35 – none else Deu 5:7 – General Deu 6:14 – not go Deu 11:16 – your heart Deu 13:8 – consent Jos 6:18 – in any wise Psa 85:11 – Truth Psa 119:144 – give me Isa 40:9 – Behold Isa 43:11 – General Mar 10:24 – Children Joh 13:33 – Little Act 1:13 – Peter Act 15:29 – if ye Gal 4:19 – little 2Pe 1:2 – the knowledge 1Jo 5:18 – keepeth Rev 19:10 – I fell

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

1Jn 5:21. Little children is explained at chapter 2:1. Even the best of disciples need to be cautioned against evils that we would not ordinarily expect them to commit. John tells his readers to keep themselves from idols which is one of such warnings. Paul told the brethren in Corinth to “flee from idolatry” (1Co 10:14).

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

5:21 {19} Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

(19) He expresses a plain precept of taking heed of idols: which he contrasts with the only true God, that with this seal he might seal up all the former doctrine.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

John closed with a final admonition. Departure from the true God and His teaching constitutes idolatry. As contradicting God is really calling Him a liar (1Jn 1:10), so departing from God is really idolatry. Departing from God includes leaving apostolic teaching and practice, behaving as a child of Satan rather than as a child of God.

"False teaching is ultimately ’apostasy from the true faith.’ To follow after it is to become nothing better than an idol worshiper, especially if it is a matter of the truth of one’s conception of God. The author is blunt. The false teachers propose not the worship of the true God, made known in his Son Jesus, but a false god-an idol they have invented." [Note: Barker, p. 357.]

This verse is a New Testament restatement for Christians of the first commandment God gave the Israelites in the Decalogue (Exo 20:3-5; Deu 5:7-9).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 1 Part 1

1 John

THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.

1Jn 5:21

AFTER the example of a writer of genius, preachers and essayists for the last forty years have constantly applied-or misapplied-some lines from one of the greatest of Christian poems. Dante writes of St. John-

“As he, who looks intent,

And strives with searching ken, how he may see

The sun in his eclipse, and, through decline

Of seeing, loseth power of sight: so I Gazed on that last resplendence.”

The poet meant to be understood of the Apostles spiritual splendour of soul, of the absorption of his intellect and heart in his conception of the Person of Christ and of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. By these expositors of Dante the image is transferred to the style and structure of his writings. But confusion of thought is not magnificence, and mere obscurity is never sun-like. A blurred sphere and undecided outline is not characteristic of the sun even in eclipse. Dante never intended us to understand that St. John as a writer was distinguished by a beautiful vagueness of sentiment, by bright but tremulously drawn lines of dogmatic creed. It is indeed certain that round St. John himself, at the time when he wrote, there were many minds affected by this vague mysticism. For them, beyond the scanty region of the known, there was a world of darkness whose shadows they desired to penetrate. For them this little island of life was surrounded by waters into whose depths they affected to gaze. They were drawn by a mystic attraction to things which they themselves called the “shadows,” the “depths,” the “silences.” But for St. John these shadows were a negation of the message which he delivered that “God is light, and darkness in Him is none.” These silences were the contradiction of the Word who has once for all interpreted God. These depths were “depths of Satan.” For the men who were thus enamoured of indefiniteness, of shifting sentiments and flexible creeds, were Gnostic heretics. Now St. Johns style, as such, has not the artful variety, the perfect balance in the masses of composition, the finished logical cohesion of the Greek classical writers. Yet it can be loftily or pathetically impressive. It can touch the problems and processes of the moral and spiritual world with a pencil tip of deathless light, or compress them into symbols which are solemnly or awfully picturesque. Above all St. John has the faculty of enshrining dogma in forms of statement which are firm and precise-accurate enough to be envied by philosophers, subtle enough to defy the passage of heresy through their finely drawn yet powerful lines. Thus in the beginning of his Gospel all false thought upon the Person of Him who is the living theology of His Church is refuted by anticipation that which in itself or in its certain consequences unhumanises or undeifies the God Man; that which denies the singularity of the One Person who was Incarnate, or the reality and entireness of the manhood of Him who fixed His Tabernacle of humanity in us.

It is therefore a mistake to look upon the First Epistle of St. John as a creedless composite of miscellaneous sweetnesses, a disconnected rhapsody upon philanthropy. And it will be well to enter upon a serious perusal of it, with the conviction that it did not drop from the sky upon an unknown place, at an unknown time, with an unknown purpose. We can arrive at some definite conclusions as to the circumstances from which it arose, and the sphere in which it was written-at least if we are entitled to say that we have done so in the case of almost any other ancient document of the same nature.

Our simplest plan will be, in the first instance, to trace in the briefest outline the career of St. John after the Ascension of our Lord, so far as it can be followed certainly by Scripture, or with the highest probability from early Church history. We shall then be better able to estimate the degree in which the Epistle fits into the framework of local thought and circumstances in which we desire to place it.

Much of this biography can best be drawn out by tracing the contrast between St. John and St. Peter, which is conveyed with such subtle and exquisite beauty in the closing chapter of the fourth Gospel.

The contrast between the two Apostles is one of history and of character.

Historically, the work done by each of them for the Church differs in a remarkable way from the other.

We might have anticipated for one so dear to our Lord a distinguished part in spreading the Gospel among the nations of the world. The tone of thought revealed in parts of his Gospel might even have seemed to indicate a remarkable aptitude for such a task. St. Johns peculiar appreciation of the visit of the Greeks to Jesus, and his preservation of words which show such deep insight into Greek religious ideas, would apparently promise a great missionary, at least to men of lofty speculative thought. But in the Acts of the Apostles St. John is first overshadowed, then effaced, by the heroes of the missionary epic, St. Peter and St. Paul. After the close of the Gospels he is mentioned five times only. Once his name occurs in a list of the Apostles. Thrice he passes before us with Peter. Once again (the first and last time when we hear of St. John in personal relation with St. Paul) he appears in the Epistle to the Galatians with two others, James and Cephas, as reputed to be pillars of the Church. But whilst we read in the Acts of his taking a certain part in miracles, in preaching, in confirmation; while his boldness is acknowledged by adversaries of the faith; not a line of his individual teaching is recorded. He walks in silence by the side of the Apostle who was more fitted to be a missionary pioneer.

With the materials at our command, it is difficult to say how St. John was employed whilst the first great advance of the cross was in progress. We know for certain that he was at Jerusalem during the second visit of St. Paul. But there is no reason for conjecturing that he was in that city when it was visited by St. Paul on his last voyage (A.D. 60); while we shall presently have occasion to show how markedly the Church tradition connects St. John with Ephesus.

We have next to point out that this contrast in the history of the Apostles is the result of a contrast in their characters. This contrast is brought out with a marvellous prophetic symbolism in the miraculous draught of fishes after the Resurrection.

First as regards St. Peter.

“When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fishers coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the sea.” His was the warm energy, the forward impulse of young life, the free bold plunge of an impetuous and chivalrous nature into the waters which are nations and peoples. In he must; on he will. The prophecy which follows the thrice renewed restitution of the fallen Apostle is as follows: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee where thou wouldest not. This spake He, signifying by what death He should glorify God, and when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me.” This, we are told, is obscure; but it is obscure only as to details. To St. Peter it could have conveyed no other impression than that it foretold his martyrdom. “When thou wast young,” points to the tract of years up to old age. It has been said that forty is the old age of youth, fifty the youth of old age. But our Lord does not actually define old age by any precise date. He takes what has occurred as a type of Peters youthfulness of heart and frame-“girding himself,” with rapid action, as he had done shortly before; “walking,” as he had walked on the white beach of the lake in the early dawn; “whither thou wouldest,” as when he had cried with impetuous, half-defiant independence, “I go a-fishing,” invited by the auguries of the morning, and of the water. The form of expression seems to indicate that Simon Peter was not to go far into the dark and frozen land; that he was to be growing old, rather than absolutely old. Then should he stretch forth his hands, with the dignified resignation of one who yields manfully to that from which nature would willingly escape. “This spake He,” adds the evangelist, “signifying by what death He shall glorify God.” What fatal temptation leads so many commentators to minimise such a prediction as this? If the prophecy were the product of a later hand, added after the martyrdom of St. Peter, it certainly would have wanted its present inimitable impress of distance and reserve.

It is in the context of this passage that we read most fully and truly the contrast of our Apostles nature with that of St. Peter. St. John, as Chrysostom has told us in deathless words, was loftier, saw more deeply, pierced right into and through spiritual truths, was more the lover of Jesus than of Christ, as Peter was more the lover of Christ than of Jesus. Below the different work of the two men, and determining it, was this essential difference of nature, which they carried with them into the region of grace. St. John was not so much the great missionary with his sacred restlessness; not so much the oratorical expositor of prophecy with his pointed proofs of correspondence between prediction and fulfilment, and his passionate declamation driving in the conviction of guilt like a sting that pricked the conscience. He was the theologian; the quiet master of the secrets of the spiritual life; the calm, strong controversialist who excludes error by constructing truth. The work of such a spirit as his was rather like the finest product of venerable and long established Churches. One gentle word of Jesus sums up the biography of long years which apparently were without the crowded vicissitudes to which other Apostles were exposed. If the old Church history is true, St. John was either not called upon to die for Jesus, or escaped from that death by a miracle. That one word of the Lord was to become a sort of motto of St. John. It occurs some twenty-six times in the brief pages of these Epistles. “If I will that he abide”-abide in the bark, in the Church, in one spot, in life, in spiritual communion with Me. It is to be remembered finally, that not only spiritual, but ecclesiastical consolidation is attributed to St. John by the voice of history. He occupied himself with the visitation of his Churches and the development of Episcopacy. So in the sunset of the Apostolic age stands before us the mitred form of John the Divine. Early Christianity had three successive capitals-Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus. Surely, so long as St. John lived, men looked for a Primate of Christendom not at Rome but at Ephesus.

How different were the two deaths! It was as if in His words our Lord allowed His two Apostles to look into a magic glass, wherein one saw dimly the hurrying feet, the prelude to execution which even the saint wills not; the other the calm life, the gathered disciples, the quiet sinking to rest. In the clear obscure of that prophecy we may discern the outline of Peters cross, the bowed figure of the saintly old man. Let us be thankful that John “tarried.” He has left the Churches three pictures that can never fade-in the gospel the picture of Christ, in the Epistles the picture of his own soul, in the Apocalypse the picture of Heaven.

So far we have relied almost exclusively upon indications supplied by Scripture. We now turn to Church history to fill in some particulars of interest.

Ancient tradition unhesitatingly believed that the latter years of St. Johns prolonged life were spent in the city of Ephesus, or province of Asia Minor, with the Virgin Mother, the sacred legacy from the cross, under his fostering care for a longer or shorter portion of those years. Manifestly he would not have gone to Ephesus during the lifetime of St. Paul. Various circumstances point to the period of his abode there as beginning a little after the fall of Jerusalem (A.D. 67). He lived on until towards the close of the first century of the Christian era, possibly two years later (A.D. 102). With the date of the Apocalypse we are not directly concerned, though we refer it to a very late period in St. Johns career, believing that the Apostle did not return from Patmos until just after Domitians death. The date of the Gospel may be placed between A.D. 80 and 90. And the First Epistle accompanied the Gospel, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter.

The Epistle then, like the Gospel, and contemporaneously with it, saw the light in Ephesus, or in its vicinity. This is proved by three pieces of evidence of the most unquestionable solidity.

(1) The opening chapters of the Apocalypse contain an argument which cannot be explained away for the connection of St. John with Asia Minor and with Ephesus. And the argument is independent of the authorship of that wonderful book. Whoever wrote the Book of the Revelation must have felt the most absolute conviction of St. Johns abode in Ephesus and temporary exile to Patmos. To have written with a special view of acquiring a hold upon the Churches of Asia Minor, while assuming from the very first as fact what they, more than any other Churches in the world, must have known to be fiction, would have been to invite immediate and contemptuous rejection. The three earliest chapters of the Revelation are unintelligible, except as the real or assumed utterance of a Primate (in later language) of the Churches of Asia Minor. To the inhabitants of the barren and remote isle of Patmos, Rome and Ephesus almost represented the world; their rocky nest among the waters was scarcely visited except as a brief resting place for those who sailed from one of those great cities to the other, or for occasional traders from Corinth.

(2) The second evidence is the fragment of the Epistle of Irenaeus to Florinus preserved in the fifth book of the “Ecclesiastical History” of Eusebius. Irenaeus mentions no dim tradition, appeals to no past which was never present. He has but to question his own recollections of Polycarp, whom he remembered in early life. “Where he sat to talk, his way, his manner of life, his personal appearance, how he used to tell of his intimacy with John, and with the others who had seen the Lord.” Irenaeus elsewhere distinctly says that “John himself issued the Gospel while living at Ephesus in Asia Minor, and that he survived in that city until Trajans time.”

(3) The third great historical evidence which connects St. John with Ephesus is that of Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, who wrote a synodical epistle to Victor and the Roman Church on the Quartodeciman question, toward the close of the second century. Polycrates speaks of the great ashes which sleep in Asia Minor until the Advent of the Lord, when He shall raise up His saints. He proceeds to mention Philip who sleeps in Hierapolis; two of his daughters; a third who takes her rest in Ephesus, and “John moreover, who leaned upon the breast of Jesus, who was a high priest bearing the radiant plate of gold upon his forehead.”

This threefold evidence would seem to tender the sojourn of St. John at Ephesus for many years one of the most solidly attested facts of earlier Church history.

It will be necessary for our purpose to sketch the general condition of Ephesus in St. Johns time.

A traveller coming from Antioch of Pisidia (as St. Paul did A.D. 54) descended from the mountain chain which separates the Meander from the Cayster. He passed down by a narrow ravine to the “Asian meadow” celebrated by Homer. There, rising from the valley, partly running up the slope of Mount Coressus, and again higher along the shoulder of Mount Prion, the traveller saw the great city of Ephesus towering upon the hills, with widely scattered suburbs. In the first century the population was immense, and included a strange mixture of races and religions. Large numbers of Jews were settled there, and seems to have possessed a full religious organisation under a High priest or Chief Rabbi. But the prevailing superstition was the worship of the Ephesian Artemis. The great temple, the priesthood whose chief seems to have enjoyed a royal or quasi-royal rank, the affluence of pilgrims at certain seasons of the year, the industries connected with objects of devotion, supported a swarm of devotees, whose fanaticism was intensified by their material interest in a vast religious establishment. Ephesus boasted of being a theocratic city, the possessor and keeper of a temple glorified by art as well as by devotion. It had a civic calendar marked by a round of splendid festivities associated with the cultus of the goddess. Yet the moral reputation of the city stood at the lowest point, even in the estimation of Greeks. The Greek character was effeminated in Ionia by Asiatic manners, and Ephesus was the most dissolute city of Ionia. Its once superb schools of art became infected by the ostentatious vulgarity of an ever-increasing parvenu opulence. The place was chiefly divided between dissipation and a degrading form of literature. Dancing and music were heard day and night; a protracted revel was visible in the streets. Lascivious romances whose infamy was proverbial were largely sold and passed from hand to hand. Yet there were not a few of a different character. In that divine climate, the very lassitude, which was the reaction from excessive amusement and perpetual sunshine, disposed many minds to seek for refuge in the shadows of a visionary world. Some who had received or inherited Christianity from Aquila and Priscilla, or from St. Paul himself, thirty or forty years before, had contaminated the purity of the faith with inferior elements derived from the contagion of local heresy, or from the infiltration of pagan thought. The Ionian intellect seems to have delighted in imaginative metaphysics; and for minds undisciplined by true logic or the training of severe science imaginative metaphysics is a dangerous form of mental recreation. The adept becomes the slave of his own formulae, and drifts into partial insanity by a process which seems to himself to be one of indisputable reasoning. Other influences outside Christianity ran in the same direction. Amulets were bought by trembling believers. Astrological calculations were received with the irresistible fascination of terror. Systems of magic, incantations, forms of exorcism, traditions of theosophy, communications with demons-all that we should now sum up under the head of spiritualism-laid their spell upon thousands. No Christian reader of the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles will be inclined to doubt that beneath all this mass of superstition and imposture there lay some dark reality of evil power. At all events the extent of these practices, these “curious arts” in Ephesus at the time of St. Pauls visit, is clearly proved by the extent of the local literature which spiritualism put forth. The value of the books of magic which were burned by penitents of this class, is estimated by St. Luke at fifty thousand pieces of silver-probably about thirteen hundred and fifty pounds of our money!

Let us now consider what ideas or allusions in the Epistles of St. John coincide with, and fit into, this Ephesian contexture of life thought.

We shall have occasion in the third chapter to refer to forms of Christian heresy or of semi-Christian speculation indisputably pointed to by St. John, and prevalent in Asia Minor when the Apostle wrote. But besides this, several other points of contact with Ephesus can be detected in the Epistles before us.

(1) The first Epistle closes with a sharp decisive warning, expressed in a form which could only have been employed when those who were addressed habitually lived in an atmosphere saturated with idolatry, where the social temptations to come to terms with idolatrous practices were powerful and ubiquitous. This was no doubt true of many other places at the time, but it was preeminently true of Ephesus. Certain of the Gnostic Christian sects in Ionia held lax views about “eating things sacrificed unto idols,” although fornication was a general accompaniment of such a compliance. Two of the angels of the Seven Churches of Asia within the Ephesian group-the angels of Pergamum and of Thyatira-receive special admonition from the Lord upon this subject. These considerations prove that the command, “Children, guard yourselves from the idols,” had a very special suitability to the conditions of life in Ephesus.

(2) The population of Ephesus was of a very composite kind. Many were attracted to the capital of Ionia by its reputation as the capital of the pleasures of the world, It was also the centre of an enormous trade by land and sea. Ephesus, Alexandria, Antioch, and Corinth were the four cities where at that period all races and all religions of civilised men were most largely represented. Now the First Epistle of St. John has a peculiar breadth in its representation of the purpose of God. Christ is not merely the fulfilment of the hopes of one particular people. The Church is not merely destined to be the home of a handful of spiritual citizens. The Atonement is as wide as the race of man. “He is the propitiation for the whole world; we have seen, and bear witness that the Father sent the Son as Saviour of the world.” A cosmopolitan population is addressed in a cosmopolitan epistle.

(3) We have seen that the gaiety and sunshine of Ephesus was sometimes darkened by the shadows of a world of magic; that for some natures Ionia was a land haunted by spiritual terrors. He must be a hasty student who fails to connect the extraordinary narrative in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts with the ample and awful recognition in the Epistle to the Ephesians of the mysterious conflict in the Christian life against evil intelligences, real, though unseen. The brilliant rationalist may dispose of such things by the convenient and compendious method of a sneer. “Such narratives as that” (of St. Pauls struggle with the exorcists at Ephesus) “are disagreeable little spots in everything that is done by the people. Though we cannot do a thousandth part of what St. Paul did, we have a system of physiology and of medicine very superior to his.” Perhaps he had a system of spiritual diagnosis very superior to ours. In the epistle to the Angel of the Church of Thyatira, mention is made of “the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,” who led astray the servants of Christ. St. John surely addresses himself to a community where influences precisely of this kind exist, and are recognised when he writes, – “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God.” The Church or Churches, which the First Epistle directly contemplates, did not consist of men just converted. Its whole language supposes Christians, some of whom had grown old and were “fathers” in the faith, while others who were younger enjoyed the privilege of having been born and brought up in a Christian atmosphere. They are reminded again and again, with a reiteration which would be unaccountable if it had no special significance, that the commandment “that which they heard,” “the word,” “the message,” is the same which they had “from the beginning.” Now this will exactly suit the circumstances of a Church like the Ephesian, to which another Apostle had originally preached the Gospel many years before. On the whole, we have in favour of assigning these Epistles to Ionian and Ephesian surroundings a considerable amount of external evidence. The general characteristics of the First Epistle consonant with the view of their origin which we have advocated are briefly these:

(1) It is addressed to readers who were encompassed by peculiar temptations to make a compromise with idolatry.

(2) It has an amplitude and generality of tone which befitted one who wrote to a Church which embraced members from many countries, and was thus in contact with men of many races and religions.

(3) It has a peculiar solemnity of reference to the invisible world of spiritual evil and to its terrible influence upon the human mind.

(4) The Epistle is pervaded by a desire to have it recognised that the creed and law of practice which it asserts is absolutely one with that which had been proclaimed by earlier heralds of the cross to the same community.

Every one of these characteristics is consistent with the destination of the Epistle for the Christians of Ephesus in the first instance. Its polemical element, which we are presently to discuss, adds to an accumulation of coincidences which no ingenuity can volatilise away. The Epistle meets Ephesian circumstances; it also strikes at Ionian heresies. Aia-so-Louk, the modern name of Ephesus, appears to be derived from two Greek words, which speak of St. John the Divine, the theologian of the Church. As the memory of the Apostle haunts the city where he so long lived, even in its fall and long decay under its Turkish conquerors, -and the fatal spread of the malaria from the marshes of the Cayster-so a memory of the place seems to rest in turn upon the Epistle, and we read it more satisfactorily while we assign to it the origin attributed to it by Christian antiquity, and keep that memory before our minds.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary