Faith Is The Victory
By
Professor EM Blaiklock MA Litt.D.
THE SPIRIT OF ANTICHRIST:
The old perils still confront Christian men. The ancient pressures on the mind and heart remain, and John's words of warning, guidance and exhortation, are relevant today, and should be read with the most alert attention.
Look, for example, at the first six verses of Ch. 4. The Christian must be taught to discern the spirit of Antichrist abroad in the world. It is impossible to deny that there are spiritual influences at large which do not emanate from God. Their power is sometimes vast and devilish, and too obviously evil for any Christian to doubt its source and nature. At other times, as in the case of John's own perverters of Christian truth, error comes in the guise of enlightenment, arrayed for the deception of the very elect. Those of us who have seen the wave of liberal theology pass through and almost drown the Church, pay its contribution to the spiritual breakdown of this century, and leave a wrack of ruin in its train, know what John meant.
And John's test applies. "Test the spirits," he insists, using, be it noted, a word which suggests a good and hopeful aim, a proving with the desire in mind that the object proved may stand the test. We are not to be eager to impute error, to find fault and heresy where none is intended. We are not to apply tests and canons of our own invention, eager to demonstrate that all the rest are wrong, and we alone are right. Too often has orthodoxy shown that spirit, and antagonised where it might have reconciled, and spoiled all testimony to truth by a lamentable lack of love which belies truth quite as vital. It is not for nothing that the theme of vv. 9-12 follows, in this chapter, the exhortation to Christian love, because God Himself is love, and mutual love, as the Lord said just before Geth-semane, is the test of God's presence in our lives.
The basis of the test by which the spirit of Antichrist is recognised is none the less firm and precise. It is this-is Jesus recognised as the Christ, God's Anointed come in the flesh?
Lamentable and pathetic heresies have sought in our own day to hold to shreds of Christianity wrapped round the person of a dishonoured, human Christ. No one has a right to claim the name of Christian, and presumptuously to exercise an alleged Christian ministry, who in any way denies or detracts from the deity of Jesus Christ, conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, rose and ascended on high. And no one has the right to deny the name of brother to anyone who, in sincerity of heart, holds these truths. No other test is mentioned. In other matters opinion may vary, and Christian love should accept the fact, for once let the central truth of Christ's perfect deity be held in loyalty, and nothing else can be significantly awry.
We have already touched on the significance of vv. 7-12, in which the word "love" occurs thirteen times. John, eagerly uttering his last words to the Church, never tires of it. St. Jerome's story is well known: "Saint John the Evangelist, living in Ephesus in his extreme old age, when he was with difficulty carried into the church by his disciples, had no
strength for longer exhortation, but could only say: 'Little children, love one another? At length, the disciples and brethren who were there, wearied by the repetition, said:
Master, why do you always say this?' He replied in words worthy of himself: 'Because it is the Lord's command and if that alone is done, it suffices'." It suffices, because God is love supremely, and only those who are partakers of the Divine nature by faith can truly love.