For many deceivers have gone out into the world, they who do not confess Jesus Christ coming in flesh -- this is the deceiver and the antichrist.
John moves from love and obedience to a reason: danger is already loose in the world. His test is not conduct or sincerity. It is confession — what a teacher says about the Person of Jesus Christ.
The safeguard John gives is not suspicion but nearness to Christ. One writer says this refusal goes deeper than a wrong idea about Christ becoming man.
Nothing so preserves the saints from wrong and false teachings as walking in the power of the truth. The nearer we are to Christ, the more readily we detect what is not of Him... This was not so much a denial that He became flesh, though that might be included. It was the refusal to own and bow to the claims and authority of Christ as "come in the flesh."
John says these deceivers have gone out into the world. They are not strangers arriving from outside. They once stood among Christians and then left.
They had once been in the church, and they went out to pursue their unholy work of defying God's word and denying the Son... A man may enter the church of God and take his part in it for a while as a Christian. He goes out a great deal worse than when he came in, however bad he was. He now hates the truth, and those who hold to it. It becomes his active business to mislead the saints, defame the truth, and deny Christ.
The phrase is carefully chosen. To come in flesh says something no ordinary human birth could say.
To confess that Jesus Christ is come in flesh is to own that He existed before He became flesh. There would be no sense in saying of a mere human being that he is come in flesh. How else could he come? So to deny that Jesus Christ is come in flesh is to deny that He existed before. It is to deny that He is a divine Person — God.
The words hold two truths together. Error comes from taking only one of them.
"Jesus Christ come in the flesh" supposes neither His deity alone nor His humanity only, but both. To me the expression has no meaning unless it means both united in the same Person. In fact, veering to one side or the other — choosing part of the truth of Christ so as to set aside the rest — is a great source of error here and everywhere. Here it does the deadliest harm.
The denial John names was not hypothetical. It matched a teaching circulating while he wrote, which held that Christ was not really a man.
An early system of philosophy that claimed to be Christian. One of their theories was that the Lord was an Æon and not really a man. Apparently to refute this, the apostle insists that Christ has come "in flesh."
Writers also see the same denial reappearing across the centuries in wider forms. One puts its full range this way:
It includes all phases of evil doctrines concerning Christ, the Son of the Father. It denies His essential deity and His true humanity. It denies His virgin birth, His infallibility, His holy character, His physical resurrection, and His bodily presence in glory.
John does not say "a deceiver among many." He writes "the deceiver and the antichrist." One writer weighs this against every other trouble a church can face.
It is far worse than bringing in division and offence, bad as these are. It is far more serious even than the undermining of morality, ruinous as that must be. To sap or corrupt morality no doubt destroys oneself, and perhaps often others as well. But this defames and degrades Christ, the Son of the Father. This, then, is a bolder effort of Satan. So John calls one guilty of it not only "the deceiver" — every false teacher is more or less a deceiver — but in this case also "the antichrist."
John's warning does not cancel love. He sets two guards around it.
He had strongly pressed walking in love in the first Epistle. Here too he begs the lady that we love one another — not as a new commandment, but as the one we had from the beginning. Then he takes these two guards of true love: one is the truth and the other is obedience — just what Christ was when He was in the world.
- Confession — The dividing line is what a person confesses about Christ. He came in flesh. So He existed before He came, and He is God and man in one Person.
- Departure — These deceivers came out from among Christians. So the danger speaks familiar language. It does not look like an outsider.
- Denial — Refusing this confession is not one error among many. It defames the Son of the Father. That is why John calls such a person "the deceiver and the antichrist."
- Detection — Nearness to Christ is what makes false teaching easy to spot. Walking in the truth is the real safeguard.
- Defence — The warning does not cancel love. Truth and obedience guard it — the two things Christ Himself was in the world.
See to yourselves, that we may not lose what we have wrought, but may receive full wages.
John has just warned about deceivers who refuse to confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh. Now he turns his readers back on themselves, and ties their steadfastness to someone else's reward. Two questions follow: what could be lost, and who loses it?
John's answer to deceivers is care at home. Commentators tie the safety of the soul to the truth itself.
So he calls them to look carefully at home, in case they should stray. For God alone keeps the soul, and He does this by the truth and in the truth.
Another writer says what that daily care looks like.
Nothing preserves believers from wrong and false teaching like walking in the power of the truth. The nearer we are to Christ, the more readily we notice what is not of Him. The best safeguard against drifting, or being led astray, lies in the cultivation of our own spiritual condition.
The older text reads "that we lose not." One writer makes that pronoun the point of the whole sentence.
"Look to yourselves that we may not lose what we wrought, but may receive full reward," or wages (v. 8). It is not only an earnest caution but an appeal to love, thoroughly in our apostle's manner, as in 1 John 2:28. Old copyists, and modern editors and translators, missed this. They lost its point and reduced it to something ordinary. The Authorised Version follows the commonly received text. It has excellent support, and it gives a deeply touching sense. "Look to yourselves that we," not you, "may not lose," and so on.
Translations differ here. The ESV has "so that you may not lose what we have worked for." The older text Kelly follows keeps "we" in both halves of the sentence.
John's work was people. If they did not hold on, that work was lost. One writer sets it beside a builder whose materials burn.
If they did not remain in Him, the apostle had lost all his work. To that extent it would have been to his shame. You find the same thing in the second letter, verse 8. It is just what the apostle says to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 3:12 and following). If we build wood, hay and stubble on the foundation, the work will be burnt; there will be loss: it proves him a bad workman.
The same principle reaches everyone who teaches and serves.
Verse 8 contains a healthy word for all who labour in the word and doctrine. If the saints they minister to are turned aside from the truth, they cannot expect a full reward in the coming day. Their reward is bound up with the faithfulness and prosperity of the saints.
What is at risk here is wages, not rescue. One writer draws the line, and says why John presses the danger on people whose faith he did not doubt.
It is no question of salvation, as the reader will see at once; for that is pure and sovereign grace. The Lord Himself gives both the ability to serve and the privilege of serving. Even so, He is pleased to attach a reward to His servant's faithfulness. So John urged the elect lady and her children to look to themselves. They might fail under testing. Then it would turn out that they were only professing Christians and not real ones, that he had laboured in vain as far as they were concerned, and that he had lost his full reward. He had no doubt that their faith was real, as verses 1–4 show. He only wanted them to be fully aware of the dangers around them.
The word "full" is not decoration. One writer ties the size of the reward to the glory of Christ Himself.
"Look to yourselves," they are told. God does not want a single one of His own contaminated by the slightest link with what degrades His blessed Son. This would tend to destroy the precious work of God — work done among Christians by the devoted labour of the apostles for the person of Christ. And if believers stand firm, those who laboured for them will receive a full reward. In such a matter, a full measure is the only acceptable one, for it involves the fulness of the glory of Christ.
This reward has its day, and it reaches far beyond the first apostles.
This reward they will have from Christ in the day of His glory, in having a part with Him in His kingdom. These "wages" are not for the twelve alone, but for all who serve our Lord Jesus faithfully here below.
- Look — the guard against deceivers is care at home. God keeps the soul, and He keeps it by the truth.
- Labour — John's work was people. If those he taught turn aside, that work burns like wood, hay and stubble.
- Love — the older reading "that we lose not" makes this an appeal to their love. Their faithfulness guards his reward.
- Wages — this is reward, not salvation. Salvation is sovereign grace; the reward answers to a servant's faithfulness.
- Full — only a full measure fits, because the glory of Christ is at stake. These wages belong to all who serve Him, not to the apostles only.
Whosoever goes forward and abides not in the doctrine of the Christ has not God. He that abides in the doctrine, *he* has both the Father and the Son.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.