1 John 2:18–27
18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. 24 See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is what he promised us—even eternal life. 26 I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. 27 As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.
************
I do not like to be duped! I got an iTunes gift card for Christmas and went to the iTunes store to buy some music. I was looking for some of that classic music of the 70's, when music was good!! I saw a few tunes I recognized from my high school days, but didn’t recognize the artist. Turns out they were selling these songs performed by bands other than the original! They were cheaper than the real deal, but I felt a sense of betrayal like someone was trying to trick me into buying something I really didn’t want. I was being sold an inferior product.
John warns us that there will fakes, there will be imitators, and we need to beware of those while remaining confident of the unique claims of Jesus. Our world is not so enthusiastic with the idea of the uniqueness of Jesus, but Jesus himself leaves us no viable options other than accepting him as the Son of God. In C.S. Lewis's landmark book Mere Christianity he says this: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
John reminds us that this deep yet simple claim is one we cannot be tricked into discarding. If we do, we lose all the power and all the joy Christianity has to offer.
No comments:
Post a Comment