A Study Of The Letter Of First John – Proving That You Are A Christian Series

John wrote his first epistle from the city of Ephesus. It helps to understand this epistle if you know something about the city of Ephesus at the beginning of the second century. There were four important factors that were in play in Ephesus and throughout the Roman world when John wrote this letter.

1) The Christian faith had become tarnished.

Many of the believers were children and grandchildren of the first Christians. The new and bright sheen of the Christian faith had become tarnished. Like a new car or home, the newness had worn off. The thrill and glory of the first days had faded.

2) There was a breakdown of the Judeo-Christian ethics and a disregard of Bible standards.

The high standards of Christianity called for Christians to be different. The children and grandchildren of the first Christians did not want to be different. The new generation of Ephesians had become "cookie-cutter" Christians--Christians in name only. They were ignoring the rule of God in their lives.

3) Persecution was no longer the enemy of Christianity (ref. Stephen - Acts 7:59; James - Acts 12:2).

The Ephesian church was not in danger from outside persecution but inside seduction. Both Jesus and Paul warned this would happen:

(Acts 20:29 NKJV) "For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

(Acts 20:30 NKJV) "Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.

Christianity was not in danger of being destroyed; it was in danger of being changed. The attempt was being made to improve it, to make it respectable.

Today this is happening before our very eyes.

* Christians are refraining from preaching repentance from sin, faith in Christ and separation from the world. Instead preachers are content with teaching about

How to be successful in life, as in Joel Osteen’s bestseller, “Your Best Life Now.”

* Pastors and teachers are drifting away from teaching the Bible as the supreme standard for living and rule of faith for one's life. Instead they are espousing their own opinions.

* Church folk are no longer learning about the holiness of God but are having their ears tickled with doctrines concerning the dominion and godhood of man.

* Church music no longer has a common theme of exalting the saving and redemptive work of Christ on the Cross but focuses on the writer's superficial experiences in life.

At the time of the writing of 1st John,, the Christian faith had become tarnished. There was a disregard of Bible standards. Persecution was no longer the enemy of Christianity.

4) A false teaching called Gnosticism was the real enemy of Christianity.

Last time we learned that the term gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning "knowledge." Gnosticism is a philosophy which centers on a search for higher knowledge.

The Gnostics taught that this knowledge was not intellectual knowledge but a knowledge which the ordinary Christian was incapable of attaining.

Gnostics believed that locked within the material shell of the human race is the divine spark of this highest spiritual reality which the unskillful creator accidentally infused into humanity at the creation — on the order of a drunken jeweler who accidentally mixes gold dust into junk metal.

The only hope for humanity is to acquire the information it needs to perfect itself and evolve out of its current physical state.

These doctrines of course impacted their view of God and Christ. When it came to Christianity, the Gnostics split into factions on the subject of Christ being God in the flesh:

The Docetic Gnostics

Denied the humanity of Jesus. The word docetic comes from the Greek word dokeo, "to seem." They believed that it was impossible for God, who was spirit and good to become flesh, which was matter and evil, in the person of Jesus Christ. They taught that Jesus seemed to have a body.

The Cerinthian Gnostics

Followers of Cerinthus, they separated the man Jesus from the aeon, the power of Christ. They believed that when the dove came down on Jesus at His baptism, the power of Christ came and rested on the man Jesus. This power then departed before His death on the Cross. So it was simply the "man" Jesus who died, not Jesus Christ, God in the flesh.

These Gnostic heresies denied that God became man and walked this earth in the person of Jesus Christ to bring redemption and salvation to mankind. Having eliminated Jesus Christ as the only way to God, the Gnostics believed they could make their own way to God through the pursuit of knowledge. Thus John writes to combat this error.

There are forms of Gnosticism prevalent in our society today.

The movie The Matrix attempts to portray life from a Gnostic point of view. The movie's characters find a kind of salvation in discovering secret knowledge and in realizing that the world is not what it appears to be. Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, becomes a Gnostic messiah, one chosen to be a guide out of the illusion of the matrix.