THE HOLY SPIRIT IS YAHWEH’S RESOURCE AGAINST FALSE TEACHING
I John 2:12-27
As taught by Dave Lindstrom
I. The apostle John encourages and assures the believers of their faith and fellowship(I John 2:12-14).
A. John uses the writing style of repetition for the sake of bringing more emphasis.
1. He uses six parallel statements. By arranging them in the order he does, he brings out different encouraging statements.
2. Probably the little children, fathers, and young men are different physical ages and/or different levels of spiritual maturity.
3. There is a special emphasis on "young men type" believers to stay strong in the word and to overcome the evil one. This is probably in preparation for John’s warnings to follow.
4. All believers have had their sins forgiven (justification) and have known the Father (adoption). All "father type" believers have learned a deeper under- standing of Yahweh as the one "from the beginning."
B. John is about to warn his beloved children (in the faith) of two possible errors to watch out for that could disrupt their fellowship with Yahweh Father and Son.
II. John first warns the churches in Asia Minor of loving the world in the wrong way as some are teaching them to do (I John 2:15-17).
A. One wrong teaching at the time of this writing was Docetism. Docetism denied the reality of Jesus’ physical body because they believed that matter was not something that God could be a part of. In their world, spirit was of God but matter was not.
1. This view led them to teach an attitude that didn’t care about what went on in or around ones body. Extreme forms of this view gave their followers extreme license with regard to physical sins.
2. This view would pave the way for future Gnostic heresies in the second and third centuries. This view held that special knowledge was given to His followers in pursuit of the pure spirit of God.
B. The apostle John specifically warns his fellow believers against breaking fellowship with the Father by loving this world system.
1. He is referring to the evil world system controlled by Satan that will soon be passing away (John 16:8-11). He is not referring to the world of people(John 3:16) or to Yahweh’s creation (Gen. 1; John 17:24; Col. 1:15-19).
2. The things of this world system which are opposite of the Father’s will and love are broken down into three areas:
1) The lust of the flesh, 2) The lust of the eyes, and 3) The pride of life.
Some have likened these to the same types of temptations as Eve (Gen. 3:6) and Jesus (Luke 4:1-12).
Thought: In what ways are we tempted by this world system? How does caving in to the temptation break our fellowship with the Father?
III. John secondly warns the churches in Asia Minor of not letting themselves be led astray by false teachers and bad doctrine (I John 2:18-27).
A. Christ warned us of people that would be antichrists, "against Christ" teachings (Matt. 24:4,5). This was going to happen during the "last days" or "last hour" which was a time between Christ’s first coming and Christ’s second coming (Matt. 24:4-44; Acts 2:17-21).
B. John now warns the Christian community of the heretical teaching (the antichrist type) that denies that Jesus is the Christ. This teaching denied that the human man Jesus was also the Divine Anointed One or the Son of God (John 20:31; Rom. 1:1-4).
C. There was a teacher at the time of the apostle John whose name was Cerinthus. He taught that the Christ came in the form of a dove on the man Jesus at his baptism and withdrew again from Jesus before suffering on the cross. He taught that the Christ was pure spirit and therefore was unable to suffer or unable to inter- mingle with matter.
D. The believer has been given his own anointing because each believer, who believes and trusts in the truth about Jesus Christ, has been given the Holy Spirit (John 16:12-15; I Cor. 12:13). It is by remaining or abiding in the truth about Jesus which keeps a believer on the right track.
Thought: Do we have heretical teachers in our time which could lead believers away from true fellowship with Yahweh the Father and Son?
