Today we’re going to be thinking about how to avoid falling down a hole.
Here’s what I mean. One of the things that puts many people off Christianity are the tragic splits in the history of the church. The East split from the West in the 11th Century. The Protestant reformation was in the 16th, the Episcopal Presbyterian split in the 17th century, and the Methodist-Anglican one in the 18th century. And there have been many more besides.
Actually, the issue for us isn’t the big splits in history. Local churches can split too. Sometimes they split right down the middle. Other times a little group splinters off – either to join a neighbouring church, or to start their own, or to stop coming altogether.
And the question is how to avoid falling down the hole when this happens.
You see the stakes are so high. The real Jesus holds out the offer of eternal life. Of rescue from hell and for heaven. We’ve thought about this already in 1 John. The gifts of having our sins forgiven, of having a relationship with the risen Jesus now, of a certain future with him on a renewed earth free of all the things that spoil life. Verse 25 of our passage says exactly that: “This is the promise that he made to us – eternal life.”
The real Jesus offers us all this. But church splits are almost always about what we should believe. What is the real Jesus like? So when the church splits, a great gulf opens up at our feet, a crevasse into which ordinary Christians so easily fall. Suddenly we have a choice as to which Christianity to follow. But it matters that we choose the right one, because the stakes are eternal. Potentially, heaven and hell could depend on it.
That was the situation in the church that John was writing to. In fact, it’s largely what triggered him to write. A group have left the church, and are now trying to influence the folk who are still there. All of which makes this passage key to the letter of 1 John – it’s where John pleads with these Christian not to fall down the crack. And it makes it a very important passage for us.
Couldn’t Happen Here
I say it’s important for us, although the chances are that some of you are thinking: This couldn’t happen here! Not Kemsing! Surely, this is not relevant for us!
Actually, it could happen here – all too easily.
We may look round today and find this hard to imagine. But there are 3 reasons why this could well happen in the future, and listening to what this passage has to say now is really quite pressing.
The first reason is simply statistics. This kind of church split happens so often, in so many churches, that it’s statistically quite possible that this passage will feel very relevant indeed at some point in the next decade. What do you do when it happens? It all feels so upsetting and painful to be in the middle of, so the key to handling it right is to train ourselves now as to how we would react.
The second reason why this is more possible than we think is that the Christians who did this in John’s church were ordinary, respected members of the congregation. They weren’t parachuted in from across the Atlantic, and they didn’t look like the dodgiest used-car salesmen you’ve ever seen. They were ordinary Christians, respected members of their own church.
Which means that if John had given this teaching to this church two years before it all blew up, you know what they would have said don’t you? “That couldn’t possibly happen here”. And yet it did. And it was the least likely people. Even the vicar could become the problem. We have to be ready.
The third reason why we need this passage is something we’ll see a bit later on. The seeds of the church split started a long time before it actually happened. I’ll explain that in a minute, but the point is that preventative action earlier on might even have kept this from happening.
So I hope I’ve persuaded you that we need to hear what John says to a church that is going through this kind of split. It’s likely to happen to us one day, led by people we know and trust, and the seeds of it could be germinating even now.
Specifically, we need to hear John’s warnings about how to avoid being influenced and led astray by the wrong people. How to avoid falling into that hole.
Every parent is concerned that their children choose their friends wisely. The wrong friends could lead them down the wrong path. Those of us who have children know that concern all too well. If the church you are in experiences a split, however small or big, we also need to choose carefully who influences us.
So here are 3 hallmarks from John on how to spot the person to beware of.
As we look at them, we have to remember to take them together. They’re like 3 legs of a stool, or a plaited rope – any one of these marks on their own isn’t necessarily a warning sign. We mustn’t be hasty to label other people thea antichrist! But we must be alert.
Separate in mind, then in person
Hallmark number 1 is this: They separate in mind, then in person. They separate in mind, then in person.
Verse 19 says this: “They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
So they used to be in the church. But then they left.
And what John says is that leaving proved they were never really in it. They actually left sometime earlier – in heart and mind. They still came, but they didn’t really belong. They would have found themselves thinking: “I’m not really comfortable around here. Something in the teaching jars with me. This isn’t really me.” Their heart was not in it.
And then later on came the next logical step – they stopped coming.
Research has shown that most children who stop coming to church in their teen years make the decision to do that about the age of 7. That’s when they start to think and feel that this isn’t really for them. Then 6 years later, they stop coming.
Have you ever had one of those nights when you fancy watching a bit of telly, but there’s nothing much on. So you end up watching a film on one of the less popular channels. It’s a re-run from 1994. You’ve not heard of any of the cast, but the summary sounds interesting, so you give it a go. It turns out its dreadful. After 45 minutes, you turn it off. But then you realise that you hadn’t been enjoying it for the last half hour. You just hung on in the hope things might improve. You didn’t want to waste the time you had spent watching it. Until finally you gave up.
People do that with churches too.
I need to add that sometimes in the history of the church, it has been the orthodox who have left. They sensed, quite rightly, that the church or denomination they were in was drifting from the truth. They did the right thing to leave. That’s why we need the other two hallmarks as well – this is one of the 3 strands of rope and we take them together.
But John’s point is clear. We must beware of people who drift from the church’s leadership. Who start coming less often, out of a dissatisfaction with the teaching of the rest of the church.
It’s good to meet in a smaller group midweek, to read the Bible and pray together. I wish that many more of us did this. But sometimes those groups start to be an alternative to coming to the main gathering on a Sunday. That can be for good reasons – some people find Sundays a difficult timeslot, and meeting midweek is better than missing everything. I’m not talking about that. But a small group can be dangerous if it becomes a focus for breeding dissatisfaction with the wider church.
Separate in mind, then in person.
Spin off from original Christianity
Here’s hallmark number 2: They spin off from original Christianity. Spin off from original Christianity.
The heart of what this breakaway group taught comes in verses 22 and 23. “Who is the liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.”
Now, the problem we’ve got is that it’s quite tricky to reconstruct from that exactly what they were saying. It seems they struck at the heart of the Christian faith – who Jesus is, and what he came to do. Somehow they were denying that Jesus was the Christ – he’s not the king promised in the Old Testament. And there must have been something there about the relationship between Jesus and God the Father – either he was not God’s Son, or God was not his Father.
Later on in 1 John, we’ll also see that they were denying certain truths about Jesus’ death, and what it achieved.
It’s hard to reconstruct exactly, but we’ve got enough here to see why it was so dangerous. This was not a brand new religion. It was a spin-off. They still talked about Jesus, about the Trinity, about the Christ, and about the cross. But they put a spin on those things. They redefined some of the terms. So actually, it was a different religion. But it sounded so much like Christianity that it was hard to believe things had moved so far from the original.
John gives the antidote in verse 24: “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.” Stick to what you heard from the beginning. He says: Think back to when you first heard about Jesus. What was it back then that persuaded you to become a Christian? What message was it that gripped you back then? Did a friend share the good news with you? Did you do the Christianity Explored course or something similar? Did you read a book that set out the gospel? What was it? Stick with that.
We all have so much to learn about God. We’ll never run out of new things to discover. But that’s about going deeper. The alarm bells should ring when someone asks us to believe something different.
“I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I am a sinner. Jesus died for my sins, and he rose again so that I can trust and follow him today. And the Bible is God’s word, where God tells me these things are so.” “Oh,” they say, “you still believe that. That’s fine when you’re just starting out. It’s time to grow up.” Oh dear.
Now we mustn’t misunderstand this. It’s possible to start following Jesus having heard a pretty shaky version of the message about him. You hear reports of people in the Middle East having a vision of Jesus. They start to follow him having had virtually no teaching to ground them. Others hear about Jesus through some of the dangerous cults that exist, but somehow put their trust in the real Jesus and later find out how many lies they had been fed. These things happen.
So we have to remember that the language in these verses of “from the beginning” is language we’ve met before in 1 John. It doesn’t just mean “from your beginning”, “when you first heard about Jesus”. It also means from the beginning – the beginning of Christianity itself.
However shakily you were taught when you started out, here’s a comparison we can all do. What did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John teach that following Jesus is all about? How about the other 23 books of the New Testament? And the 39 books of the Old? That’s Christianity “from the beginning”. Don’t move from it.
Someone I know used to love Minis. The Italian Job was her favourite film. Her dream was to own a brand new Mini. But the problem was that they had stopped making them. But then the Mini brand was bought up, and manufacture began again, so she saved and saved until she could buy a brand new Mini Cooper. But then the disappointment. This was not a Mini at all. It was too big. The corners were too rounded. It didn’t have that steel beading just above the door opening. The climate controls worked far too reliably. It would never fit in the sewers of Turin. It was all wrong.
Stick with what you heard from the beginning, says John. Don’t believe the spin-off.
They spin off from original Christianity.
Offer spiritually superior teaching
Hallmark number 3: They offer spiritually superior teaching. Spiritually superior teaching.
We have to read John’s solution to see the problem these Christians were facing.
The solution comes in verse 20: “But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.”
Or again in verse 27: “The anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you.”
Their defence is that they have an anointing from God. He’s talking about the Spirit. These Christians have God’s Spirit living in them. Which means that they know the truth. The truth about Jesus, the truth about God. And the lie that this breakaway group is selling them ain’t it. They don’t need anyone to teach them.
He’s picking up on the Old Testament. In Old Testament times, God’s Spirit only rested on certain key individuals. Ordinary people had to ask the experts about God. But the Old Testament looked forward to a new covenant. And one of its blessings would be that we will all have the Spirit, so we’ll all know God for ourselves.
And this gives the Christians John writes to another way to spot a twisted version of Christianity. They know God first-hand. They haven’t just got second-hand knowledge of him. And so watch out for any Christianity that doesn’t fit with the God you know.
Now, once again, we need the other two hallmarks as well, don’t we? It’s possible to be sincerely mistaken, and what we take to be a first-hand experience of God may actually be a delusion.
This allows us to reconstruct the appeal of this renegade group. They were saying to these Christians, “You do need a teacher. We have things about God to teach you that you don’t know yet. We’re experts. Not because we know more about God than you do, but because we have experienced him for ourselves. We have the Spirit in a way that you don’t. So come with us, and take on board our most recent insights.”
So John warns: Watch out for those who offer spiritually superior teaching. You don’t need it. You’re a Christian. You know God. You have the Bible. You have God’s Spirit to enable you to understand it. Don’t fall for the expert.
Today, spiritually superior teaching might take a number of forms. Some people refer to their intuition about God. The rest of us have to think hard, or read our Bibles – but they have a better starting point than that. They just know what he’s like. Everything else must bow to what is obvious for them.
Other people point to their reason, their intellect. Our ability to think is a God-given gift. This is how God’s Spirit works. Those who are clever enough to work things out, and who use that intellect to mine for God, will have access to him that the rest of us would do well to heed.
Others would point to their feelings, an experience they claim was the Spirit. At a meeting a few years back, I felt a strange warmth, and God has been closer to me ever since. He now speaks in a personal way. I don’t need the Bible as much as I used to – it’s like an old fashioned letter, whereas God speaks to me in person.
All variations on the same thing – people who have experienced God’s Spirit. So their teaching carries a certain spiritual superiority.
This gives us a different defence against those who leave. Warning about spin-offs defends us against the content of their teaching. Warning against their spiritual superiority defends us against the insecurity we can feel when we’re up against their credentials.
I remember the first time I had to go into the City during morning rush hour. It was for a job interview. I was left looking at my A-Z and the signs in Monument station. Everybody else did this every day. Without looking, they went the right way at the top of the steps. They even knew where to stand on the platform ready for the doors to open. I felt a bit of a fraud. This is their world. They know it so well. I don’t really belong here.
Sometimes other Christians can make us feel a bit like that. A bit of a fraud. They move comfortably in this world. My little steps are a bit faltering. This is their world. I don’t really belong here.
And to all of that, John would say to us: You have an anointing. You know the truth. You don’t need anyone to teach you. If you are a Christian you have the Spirit, and none of those people are any more in touch with God than you are.
Conclusion
This chapter may not be for Kemsing, for today.
But it will be at some point in the future, because every church goes through this.
John writes to a church he knows and loves dearly. A group has just split off from the main fellowship, and the rest are feeling the pressure to go and join them to. So he writes to them with tears in his eyes. He is full of affection. His opening sentence, “My dear children,…”. I write these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. Please, don’t fall for it.
Don’t be led astray by those who left in mind long ago, and now have left in person Don’t be led astray by a spin-off from original Christianity. Don’t be led astray by spiritually superior teaching.
Please,… stick with Jesus. Remain in him. Never go anywhere else.