NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY
By Dr. Robert R. Seyda
FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN
CHAPTER FIVE (Lesson CLII) 05/27/23
5:21 So, dear children, keep yourselves away from false gods.
Consistent with the Apostle John’s advice, Heinrich A. W. Meyer (1800-1882) has the Apostle John saying that if believers come to the true God through the Anointed One, they must take care that they do not lose this eternal and highest gift by giving themselves up to any vain idol. In this train of thought, John closes his Epistle with a short exhortation, however impressive in its brevity: “Begin planning to guard yourselves against idols.”
In the opening, the Greek word tekton,[1] we may see the depth of the feeling with which John utters these concluding words. Suppose the warning is not regarded as an appendix, foreign to the Epistle’s contents. In that case, we could accept the interpretation that John, the antithesis to the false teachers, had so decidedly referred to Jesus as being part of the true Godhead; he had a mental image of those teachers in view. It is only if so taken that the warning to keep themselves from idols forms another appropriate conclusion for the whole Epistle.
With noticeable spiritual comprehension, Henry Cowles (1802-1881) examines the significant points of truth in verses twenty and twenty-one by which “we know” and that the “Son of God has come into our world,” thereby giving us an understanding of the true God. It brought us into relations to God, best expressed by the words, “We are in Him.” Moreover, we are in Him, the true God, by being in His Son Jesus the Anointed One. To begin with, by knowing and receiving His Son, we have come to recognize, accept, and love the Father. Being in the Father comes with being in the Son. So intimate and so peculiar is the relationship of the Father to the Son that we can scarcely distinguish even in thought being in the Son from being in the Father who sent Him.
Having said all this, is it even supposable that John should close by saying there is but one true God, and to make Jesus Divine is to make two? John has not told us definitely how He avoids meeting this objection but has left us the fact with no attempt at metaphysical explanation. From his silence on this point, it is probably safe to infer that we shall need the light of a brighter world and perhaps the power of more acute, discriminating, comprehensive thought until we “know the Almighty to perfection.” His closing words are – “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
Is this warning connected in thought with the subject in hand? Perhaps so, perhaps not. In that age – idolatry was practiced everywhere – it could never be wrong to give this warning. Yet a certain connection is supposable ‒ say with verse nineteen, “The whole world lies in wickedness;” we who are of God must withstand idolatry on every side. Or possibly with verse twenty; “We worship the Father as God; the Son as truly Divine.” Beyond these, none other. Beware of being drawn to the worship of idols.”[2]
Called a great and rare spiritual thinker, Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) points out that the Apostle John concludes his Epistle with a warning. He was born a Jew. His goal was to witness against idols; his work was to testify of the living and true God. He existed only to do this; he was chosen to save his generation, to save the generations to come from worshipping a lie, from seeking happiness that would prove to be a lie. He saw Jesus the Anointed One as Him “in whom we are created,” of whom we are members. This Lord of our spirits, this Light of our understandings, is He in whom alone we can find the true God. Men have sought this in heaven, earth, and underground waters.[3] [4] It is He in whom alone they can find that eternal life, for which they are thirsting, and which they are trying to see in the visible earth, or some fantastic heaven, or in some depths which none have been able to sound.
Little children, as John calls his converts, believe that you need not ascend into heaven, go into the furthest corners of the earth, or go down into the abyss of hell, that you may find God. He is near you; He is with you. Therefore, trust Him; abide in Him; and perpetually renew your life at His fountain. That way, you will not bow down to the creatures of His hand; you will not confound the bright images cast forth by the minds He made in His image – which He has endued with a portion of His creative power – with your Creator and Father. Instead, you will adore Him, His Son, and He will enable you, by His Spirit, to offer yourselves, all your powers, and the earth which He has placed under you, as sacrifices to Him.’[5]
With his lifework well-illustrating the biblical and reformation ideal of a pastor-theologian, Robert S. Candlish (1807-1873) lets what the Apostle John says here in verse twenty-one be the test or criterion of what an idol is. Whatever worship or fellowship or companionship, whatever system or society, whatever work or way, whatever habit or pursuit or occupation, is of such a sort or has such influence over you that you cannot be in it and at the same time be in God. As little children to a loving Father, not remaining loyal and faithful to Him is nothing less than idolatry, whatever the object of your adoration may be.
Therefore, from all such idols, guard yourselves. And that you may keep away from them, remain evermore in union with God’s Son, your Lord and Savior Jesus the Anointed One. To always be “found in Him” is your only security.[6] To be in Him is to be in the Father, even as He is in the Father, and idolatry has no place in that.[7]
With precise spiritual discernment, William Alexander (1824-1911) points out that the Apostle John’s epistle closes with a short, sternly affectionate exhortation. “Children, guard yourselves” (the aorist imperative of immediate final decision) “from idols.” These words are natural in the atmosphere of John’s church in Ephesus.[8] The author of The Apocalypse has a similar hatred of idols.[9] The Gnostics allowed people to eat things sacrificed to idols freely. Modern, like ancient unbelief, has sometimes attributed to John a determination to exalt the Master whom he knew to be a man to an equality with God. But this is morally inconsistent with the Apostle’s unaffected shrinking from idolatry in every form.[10]
Alexander also notes the KJV and NIV translate the Greek verb phylassō as “keep.” But the word is used for “guarding.” In his Greek Lexicon, Thayer tells us that John’s use here in verse twenty-one means “to guard oneself against something.” That sure gives the idea of “keeping” a strong sense of urgency. Alexander says there is something in this passage we should pay attention to the horror of idols. Satan intends them to take away the glory of our Lord.
Bible archeologists tell us that there is no evidence or even mention of a heathen temple being converted into a Christian church in all of Asia Minor. It would be like taking an old outdoor toilet and turning it into a prayer chamber. All the prayers would not take away the stink of rotting excrement. No, the things a godless society worships and spends its money on are no substitute for loving God. They are like a narcotic; once you allow it to function in your system, each time, you’ll need more and more until God has no place in your life.[11]
With an inquiring mind, Daniel D. Whedon (1808-1885) says that John’s mention of idols caused them to immediately think of Gentiles brought by the Anointed One to understand the true God. They were surrounded on every hand by false godsin Ephesus and all of Asia Minor. In Ephesus, the temple of Artemis (Diana) still stood in pride and power. Hence it became the little body of Christians, one and all, to beware of idols.
It is the last tender warning of the venerable apostle to his little childrenat this same Ephesus to keepthemselves from Artemis and her images and adhere to the trueGod in His Son, Jesus the Anointed One. John closes with as emphatic an abruptness as he commences this epistle. But there was a particular danger arising from the seductions of the errorists condemned in this epistle, who, in fact, advocated participating in the sacrificial banquets of the pagan temples. An idol is an image, a pretense, a phantom, an unreality, in opposition to the true God, who is the infinite reality.[12]
In line with Apostle John’s conclusion, Henry Alford (1810-1871) sees the Apostle John parting from his little children with his warmest and most affectionate plea to keep themselves from idols – (John uses eidolon, “idol” a figure of an imaginary deity, while homoióma “likeness”[13] is that of some person or thing made into an object of worship. All around the Christian Church was heathenism: those born of God and those under the spell of evil were the only two classes: those who escaped Satan’s grasp and surrendered to the Savior’s arms and became God’s children. John now warns of the consequence of letting go of the only true God, in whom they can only abide by staying in His Son Jesus the Anointed One. In these solemn terms, to leave on their minds a wholesome terror of any the slightest deviation from the truth of God, seeing into what relapse it would plunge them.[14]
As a faithful and zealous scholar, William Graham (1810-1883) sees the Apostle John wanting to protect his little children, especially the converted Gentiles, from all false gods of the imagination to the worship of which their fallen, terrified, shivering nature is so prone. The mythologies of Greece and Rome were a great system of idol worship and were condemned in verse twenty-one. So, also, angel[15] and saint[16] worship is forbidden in John’s words “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Yahweh alone is our God. Every other worship is idolatry.[17]
With the zeal of a scriptural text examiner, William E. Jelf (1811-1875) is sure that with Christians knowing the true God, the supreme undivided Being, the Creator and Governor of a godless society, the true God as revealing Himself on earth in the separate person of His Son Jesus the Anointed One, must guard against falling into the errors as former generations did, who, chosen not to retain God in their knowledge, but substituted devotion to lifeless idols in place of worshipping the living God in His glory. But this does not seem to follow naturally from the context in the Epistle’s conclusion.
On the contrary, it would imply a danger arising directly from Jesus being presented as God and man. It may well be that the Spirit brought before John’s mind the risk that Jesus being God in human form would lead them to make gods out of other creatures and invest them with Divine attributes and power (as did the Romans and Greeks) and approach them with prayer and praise. This would be idolatry involving noneternal creatures. And so, John adds these words at the end of his Epistle, lest the doctrine he insisted on concerning the God/man Jesus be misused and perverted.[18]
After checking the text closely, Richard H. Tuck (1817-1868) takes the Apostle John’s parting words as something suggested by the thought of Jesus being part of the “true Godhead.” Every scheme of thought, every object of affection, which is not of Him, is a rival to His kingdom, a false god, an imaginary presence without evidence or truth. Every street through which John’s readers walked, and every heathen house they visited, swarmed with idols in the literal sense; magnificent temples, groves, and seductive idolatrous rites constituted some of the chief attractions of Ephesus. The first four centuries AD history is recorded of the strictness necessary to preserve Christians from the interests of idolatry. John hints that Jesus is no idol. The Son of God, manifested in the flesh as the Son of man, was a Being not only altogether worthy to be worshipped and served but a Being whose worship and service are supremely ennobling.[19]
After observing the Apostle John’s attention to detail, John Stock (1817-1884) declares that since the Lord Jesus is part of the mighty Godhead,[20] one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the first and the last,[21] and beside them, there is no God, who is the God of the whole earth:[22] to acknowledge any other is to be guilty of idolatry. All gods outside of the Anointed One are ideologies and lead to confusion; they are imaginary and things of arrogance, hearsay, and misunderstanding;[23] and they who make them are like them, and so are all that trust in them. We approach the Father, in and through the Son, by the power of God the Holy Spirit, and know these three are one. Christianity abhors lying. Knows no other god but one, and flees from idolatry2,[24] holding fast to the commandment, “Reverence the Lord your God and serve only Him. You must use only His name to make promises.”[25]
When a godless society is preferred above the Father, it becomes an idol to the spiritual adulterers and adulteresses,[26] who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.[27] Satan tempts to every sin, to covetousness, which is idolatry: to self-worship, which is to worship him, who even dared to tempt the Lord, and by Him was cast down and overcome. The knowledge of God, renewed by the Holy Spirit, cleanses the heart from foul idolatry, leading to captivity. Then God is supremely loved; the blessings of this life acknowledged to have Him as their source, and which are thankfully used and enjoyed to His glory.[28]
With an inquiring spiritual mind, Johannes H. A. Ebrard (1819-1893) claims that verse twenty-one is not (as many think) an “abrupt” final appeal but is influenced by the Apostle John’s concept of the “true God.” If the Father, who revealed Himself in the Anointed One, is the true God – if the Son, in whom we have the Father, is the true God – it follows that we must guard ourselves against all idols, that is, against all false gods. This idea is comprehensive: it embraces all things and everything opposed to the God revealed in the Anointed One and His worship in “spirit” and “truth.”
Preeminently, it addresses the delusive and vain idols of Cerinthian Gnosticism and infidelity, whether ancient or modern. Still, it also includes the idols and false mediators of superstition, to whom the confidence is transferred which is due only to God in the Anointed One – be their name Madonna,[29] or saints, or church hierarchy, or the priesthood, or pictures, or good works, or office, or church, or sacraments. And this Anointed One we possess through the Spirit of God, whose marks and tokens are not priestly vestments, but faith and love. In this meaning, the Apostle’s cry sounds forth through all the ages in the ears of all Christians: Little children, keep yourselves from
[1] In Sanskrit the word taken denotes a wagon-builder, and that is also the literal meaning of our English word “carpenter.” In other words: an old-world carpenter was not so much someone who worked with wood (as would a modern carpenter) but rather someone who assembled things. In Greek, the word tekton means the same thing, and in the New Testament, this word is used to describe Jesus’ vocation. In Latin, the verb texere means to weave, and thus in English words like texture and text are derived from the act of weaving, and words like technology and tectonic from the idea of producing or assembling. As such, one Greek/English interlinear Bible renders tekton as “startup projects.”
[2] Cowles, Henry: The Gospel and Epistles of John, op. cit., pp. 361-362
[3] The underworld gods were named “Theoi Khthonioi” or “Chthonian gods” by the Greeks. They were ruled by the grim god Hades and his queen Persephone. The term “Chthonic gods” was also used for the closely related gods of agriculture
[5] Maurice, Frederick D., The Epistles of St. John, A Series of Lectures on Christian Ethics, op. cit., Lecture XIX, pp. 304-317
[6] Philippians 3:9
[7] Candlish, Robert S., The First Epistle of John Expounded in a Series of Lectures, op. cit., Lecture XLVI, pp. 564-576
[8] Acts of the Apostles 19:26-27
[9] Revelations 2:14, 15; 9:20; 22:15
[10] Alexander, William: Expositor’s Bible: The Epistles of St. John, op. cit., p. 275
[11] Alexander, William: The Holy Bible with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary, op cit., Vol. IV, p. 347
[12] Whedon, Daniel D., Commentary on the New Testament, op. cit., p. 282
[13] See Romans 1:23; 5:14; 6:5; 8:3; Philippians 2:7; Revelation 9:7
[14] Alford, Henry: The Greek Testament, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 515
[15] Revelation 22:8-8; See Colossians 2:18
[16] 1 Timothy 2:5; John 14:13-14; See 2 Chronicles 33:15; Leviticus 26:1; cf. Philippians 4:6; Lamentations 3:40-41; John 14:6
[17] Graham, William: The Spirit of Love, op. cit., pp. 362-363
[18] Jelf, William E., Commentary on the First Epistle of St. John, op. cit., p. 82
[19] Tuck, Richard H., The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary, op. cit., pp. 329, 341-342
[20] Isaiah 9:6
[21] Ibid. 44:6
[22] Ibid. 54:5
[23] Ibid. 41:29
[24] 1 Corinthians 4:4
[25] Deuteronomy 6:13; cf. Luke 4:8
[26] James 4:4
[27] 2 Timothy 3:4
[28] Stock, John: An Exposition of the First Epistle General of St. John, op. cit., pp. 465-467
[29] The word Madonna is derived from the Italian “ma donna,” or “my lady” and is used to describe Mary, the mother of Jesus. Central to religious art and iconography, depictions of the Virgin Mary date back to the 2nd century.
Down an Unfamiliar Road 