NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

By Dr. Robert R. Seyda

FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN

CHAPTER FIVE (Lesson CXLIII) 05/29/23

^5:21 So, dear children, keep yourselves away from false gods.

After contemplating John’s train of thought, William Kelly (1822-1888) notes that along with the truth and the grace the Apostle John impressively presents is a short and solemn warning: “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” Satan makes every object outside the Anointed One that mankind’s heart sets up and clings to an idol. They may not be for the present gold or silver, or stone or wood, but of a subtler nature. Yet the day hastens when the mass of Judaism and Christendom, even where they have boasted of their Protestantism, will amalgamate in the coming falling away to adore the Man of Sin, the Antichrist, when he sits down in God’s temple, claiming himself as God. Beware, the Lord’s return is at hand.^[1]

Familiar with John’s writing style, William B. Pope (1822-1903) mentions that this brief but all-comprehensive verse closes the Epistle, the entire apostolical testimony, and probably the whole revelation of God. Accordingly, it must have a broad interpretation. It is a solemn warning, most affectionate but most rigorous, against everything that may invade the supremacy of the “one true God,” as revealed in His Son Jesus the Anointed One, whether in the doctrine and worship of the Church or the affections of the regenerate heart. External idols, as still retained in heathenism, though fast passing away, are not excluded from the appeal. Still, there has been no allusion to them throughout the Epistle, nor did the danger of the “little children” trend in that direction.

Though John does not use the Pauline expression that Christians are the temple of the Holy Spirit, the idea of this pervades his whole doctrine. Therefore, those that dwell in love abide in God and God in them. Consequently, every thought of the mind, every feeling of the heart, and every movement of the will must be faithful in all worship to Him. As addressed to the first readers of the Epistle, the warning was against the false theosophy^[2] of the Gnostics; as a prophetic exhortation, it foresaw and guarded against all violations of the doctrine of the mediation of the trinity; and, as spoken to the inmost soul of every regenerate Christian, it proclaims the one immutable principle of the Christian religion that God must be their “All in all.”^[3]

With holiness doctrine expertise, Daniel Steele (1824-1914) says that the phrase “Little children” is a term of endearment addressed to all readers, irrespective of age. “Guard yourself against idols.” Contrast is one of the laws of the suggestion of thought. In this Epistle, we have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, the Anointed One and antichrist, life and death, righteousness and sin, the children of God and the devil’s brood, the spirit of truth and the disposition of error, the believer protected against corruption by the Only Begotten Son, and a godless society in the clutches of the old serpent, the devil. Now, we come to a fitting, practical, climacteric conclusion, “Worship the true God and shun idols.”

We must bear in mind the environment of idolatry in which Christians lived in John’s day when every street and every house swarmed with idols, and magnificent temples and groves and seductive idolatrous rites constituted the chief attraction of Ephesus, the city of great Diana. Some of the Gnostic teachers were given occasion for this warning against idols by their sophistry that idolatry was harmless or that there was no need to suffer martyrdom to avoid it. If it were sinful, it had no power to defile the spirit with the body, but the material envelope only.^[4]

After sufficient examination, Brooke Wescott (1825-1901) states that once again, the anxiety of the Apostle John calls up the title of affection which has not been used since chapter 4:4, for believers to guard themselves against going back into idolatry. The Greek verb and pronoun phylassō heautou (“keep yourselves” – KJV) is not found again in the Final Covenant.^[5]  This “guarding” of the Christian answers to the “keeping” of the Anointed One in verse eight. The active tense with the reflexive pronoun is distinguished from the middle tense in Luke’s Gospel,^[6] emphasizing the duty of personal effort because an “idol” is anything that occupies the place due to God. The definite article calls up all the familiar objects that fall under the title of “idol.” The command to Christians is not generally to keep themselves from such things as idols but the well-known objects of false devotion.^[7] This comprehensive warning is probably the latest voice of Scripture.^[8]

Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910) is considered a monarch in the pulpit, 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 elder Apostle, John, gathers his ebbing force, to sum up, his life’s work in a sentence that might still be remembered though much else was forgotten ‒ the last words stick. Perhaps, too, some thought of future generations, to whom his witness might come, passed across his mind. At all events, some felt that we are here listening to the last words of the only living Apostle that may well be in ours.

In this final utterance, you will observe that the Apostle drops the triumphant “we know,” which we have found in previous sermons reiterated with such emphasis. He does so, not because he doubts that all his brethren would gladly attest and confirm what he was about to say, but because his last words should be his own; the utterance of personal experience, and weighty with it, and with apostolic authority. So, he melts down all that he had learned from the Anointed One and had been teaching for fifty years into that one iron-clad sentence. The feeble voice rings clear and robust, then softens into tremulous tones of earnest appeal and almost a plea. The dying light leaps up in one bright flash: breaking the glass lamp, but the flame remains. And if we let it shine into our lives, we shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life.^[9]

Like a spiritual farmer planting the seed of God’s Word, Henry A. Sawtelle (1832-1913) suggests that at this point, the Apostle John is prepared to stop writing and gives his readers his parting principle, with a tenderloving address; including a title that reminded them of their relation at once to God and him, inspired them with Christian confidence, and laid the basis for strong warning and appeal. “Keep [stand] guard” (as at a garrison’s gates and on the walls) from the temptation of idolatry. It includes all idols worshiped by a godless society, whether spiritual or material. Defend yourselves from all the spirit and form of idolatry. The allegiance of your worship and love is due to Him, the True God, and Life Eternal, and not to be turned or divided to any object or system of human creation or finiteness. The Anointed One and idolatry are mutually exclusive alternatives in the hearts of men.^[10]

With Spirit-led certainty, William Baxter Godbey (1833-1920) applauds the blazing emphasis with which the Apostle John pours out a descriptive and expository explanation of Christhood. After people are well sanctified and established in holiness, there is very little probability of their deflection into idolatry. Nevertheless, young converts need constant vigilance and caution lest they be led away on some line of worldliness, all of which is idolatry.^[11]

Noting the Apostle John’s doctrinal implications, John James Lias (1834-1923) thinks that rather than confine this to “idols,” it should include figments of the imagination. The false conceptions of Divinity abroad confuse people’s minds and lead them from what is good to what is evil. These conceptions of the mind, presented in visible shape, became what in later times was known as idols. “To guard” implies more careful guardianship than “to keep.”

The latter has the result in view instead, the effect of cautious protection of oneself, namely, safety, while “to guard” gives the idea of danger to be guarded against. And this is precisely John’s point and why he concludes his epistle. It is not with the glorious truth of the last verse, with which he might have brought his teaching to an end, but with words of solemn warning suited to the dangerous position in which the persons he addressed were placed.

Idols were to be found wherever they went, notes Lias. Their temples rose in multitudes in every city and every country throughout a godless society. The household gods of the heathen faced them in every house. The rites of heathendom forced themselves on them at every public or private gathering, on every occasion of business or pleasure. Unfortunately, the principles from which they had been delivered were entwined with those rites; behind them stood the force of habit, the ties of family, and social affection. It was no easy matter in those days for Christians to stand firm. They needed constant reminding of “Him that is true,” and of the close relationship they had with Him, if they were to resist influences at once so all-pervading and so subtle. And what the Apostle said to them he says still to us.^[12]

A tried and tested biblical scholar who believes in the up-building of the Christian life, Robert Cameron (1839-1904) sees that the phrase “to keep” does not mean staying away from where idols are. Instead, we are to place ourselves so that the images cannot come where we are; that is, where our thoughts and affections are. The more authentic rendering in Greek is “Guard yourselves against idols.”

Throughout the Epistle, the Apostle John testifies that Jesus the Anointed One was the manifestation of God. If we receive Him as the manifestation of that Life, as God in the Anointed One, and if we cling to Him and have no other object of worship before our hearts, there will be no possibility of idols coming before our minds. The word translated as “keep” is only used three times by John.^[13] First, we do this by realizing that we are in the true One, even in His Son, Jesus the Anointed One. And secondly, by having our hearts stay on Him so that there is no room for any idol to find a lodging place within us.

For instance, the prophet Hosea closes his remarkable prophecy by giving a picture of Israel finally, fully redeemed from idolatry’s fatal sin. In the end, this “perverse nation” will say, “What have I to do anymore with idols? And I, I will answer and affirm him.”^[14] To have heard and understood Yahweh was to break with idols forever. We have heard, seen, gazed upon, and handled Him who is the real God – Him who is the outshining of the glory and the exact image of the essential nature of God. What have we to do with the emptiness of the idol when we have the fullness of the Father – God? The carved bust is nothing to us, whether molded by people’s hands or conceived by human hearts. What an excellent closing – so simple and yet so profound!

My, how this fits into a still more sublime beginning, exclaims Cameron! How it meets the first great need of a godless society to know the only true God! People always and everywhere have believed in some One somewhere who is over and above all things everywhere. Idols have been invented and worshiped to fill this vague concept and yet deep conviction. But in this epistle, John tells of the real God, who determined all, made all, rules over all, and redeemed all in and by his Son, Jesus the Anointed One.

This is the true God and eternal life; therefore, beloved children, keep yourselves from false, unreal, and degrading idols. Oh, the matchless wisdom and love of God! So sacred and dear to His heart is our highest good that He would not have our love, loyalty, and adoration given to any Being lower than Himself – the Most-High and Triune Holy God! The true God has been revealed. There is no excuse for idols. Having seen Him, there should be no desire for anything in place of Him. Here is a poem based on God’s words to Joseph’s son Ephraim, born in Egypt:[15]

What have I to do with idols,

Dwelling thus in Him that’s true?

How can it be occupied with shadows,

With this Substance full in view?

As the stars fade in the morning,

And the moon is merged in day,

So before His peerless glory

Every idol fades away.^[16]

Manifestly and distinctly, Erich Haupt (1841-1910) establishes that, at first glance, the last four verses are not explicitly designed to recapitulate the entire contents of the Epistle. For example, there is no reference to brotherly love in them, which has nevertheless made up half the substance of it down to the close. But this, indeed, has come into consideration only as the expression of a proper relationship with God and the means of obtaining it. From this last, everything flows, and to it, everything leads.

Hence, we have in these final verses an emphasis laid on the fundamental principles on which the Epistle rests: that we, through the mission of the Lord Jesus the Anointed One, have fellowship with God; that this fellowship protects us from sin and establishes us in a relation of perfect opposition to a godless society. But, indeed, the threefold plural “we know,” the consciousness of a typical relationship to God as His children, suggests the principle and always an energetic impulse to brotherly love. Thus, this shared consciousness, as containing the bond with God and with our brethren, is the pledge of “love perfected.” So, the Apostle John promised at the beginning to bring his readers maturity and adulthood through establishing fellowship with God and the brethren.^[17]

With his Spirit-directed calculating mind, Alfred Plummer (1841-1926) says that the Apostle John’s warning was for all his readers. They were to “guard” themselves. It is not the verb used by John verse in eighteen “keepeth” – KJV; “keeps” – NIV) but that used by Paul as “will guard,”^[18] used in the aorist imperative; “once for all be on your guard and have nothing to do with.” Using the reflexive pronoun[19] instead of the middle voice intensifies the command to personal care and exertion. This construction is frequent in John’s writings.^[20] Or perhaps, from the idols; those with which Ephesus abounded: or again, from your false gods; those which have been, or may become, a snare to you.

It is the last of the contrasts of which the Epistle is full. We have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, God and godless society, the Anointed One and Antichrist, life, and death, doing righteousness and doing sin, the children of God and the children of the devil, the spirit of truth and the nature of the error, the believer untouched by the evil one and a godless society lying in the evil one; and now at the close, we have what in that age was the ever-present and pressing contrast between the true God and the false idols. There is no need to seek far-fetched figurative explanations of “the idols” when the literal meaning lies close at hand, as suggested by the context, and is in harmony with the known circumstances of the time.^[21] With regal etiquette, Ernst von Dryander (1843-1922) suggests that maybe the Apostle John, living as he was in the midst of an idolatrous people, referred, in the first instance, to the idols he saw all around; when he wrote: “Keep yourselves from idols.” Today the forms are different from which new idolatry raises its head, but they are no less ensnaring and dangerous. The danger lies here; it is not as though anybody would think of resuscitating ancient and worn-out forms of worship, but what the Apostle would have designated idolatry is regarded as a mark of progress, expressive of the ideas of the times.

---

[1] Kelly, William: An Exposition of the Epistles of John the Apostle, op. cit., p. 393

[2] Theosophy is a mixture of divine theology and human philosophy

[3] Pope, William B., The International Illustrated Commentary on the N.T., Vol. IV, op. cit., p. 42

[4] Steele, Daniel: Half-Hours with St. John’s Epistles, op. cit., pp. 152-156

[5] Cf. Jude 1:21 tēreō heautou (“keep yourselves” – KJV); See James 1:27 (“keep himself” – KJV); 2 Corinthians 11:9 (“kept myself” – KJV) and 1 Timothy 5:22 tēreō seautou (“keep thyself” – KJV)

[6] See Luke 12:15

[7] Cf. 2 Corinthians 6:16; Romans 2:22

[8] Westcott, Brooke F., The Epistles of St. John: Greek Text with Notes, op. cit., p. 197

[9] Maclaren, Alexander: Sermons and Expositions on 1 John, op. cit., “The Last Words of the Last Apostle.”

[10] Sawtelle, Henry A., Commentary on the Epistles of John, op. cit., p. 64

[11] Godbey, William Baxter: Commentary on the New Testament, Vol. II, op. cit., p. 400

[12] Lias, John James: The First Epistle of St. John with Exposition, op. cit., pp. 420-424

[13] John 12:25; 17:12; 1 John 5:21

[14] Hosea 14:9 – Complete Jewish Bible

[15] Hosea 14:8

[16] Cameron, Robert: The First Epistle of John, or, God Revealed in Light, Life, and Love, op. cit., pp. 252-255

[17] Haupt, Erich: The First Epistle of St. John: Clark’s Foreign Theological Library, Vol. LXIV, op. cit., pp. 345-346

[18] 2 Thessalonians 3:3; See John 17:11; cf. 12:25, 47

[19] Denoting a pronoun that refers back to the subject of the clause in which it is used, e.g. myself, themselves.

[20] John 1:8, 3:3; 7:4, 11, 13, 21; Revelation 6:15, 8:6, 19:7, [from idols]

[21] Plummer, Alfred: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, N. T., Vol. IV., op. cit., pp. 172-174