CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1 John 2:18. Last time.—R.V. “last hour”; probably it should be “a last hour.” The period after Christ’s coming in the flesh, however long it may prove to be, is regarded as the “last time.” If the apostles did expect a visible return of their Lord in their day, it is quite clear that the facts of Christian history have proved that the expectation was founded on misapprehension. The Christian dispensation is the last until there is another. Antichrist shall come.—Cometh. It was the common belief of Christians that some individual antichrist would appear before our Lord’s second coming; and a similar notion is entertained by those who look for the second coming now. Antichrist is any person, or any thing, that opposes the establishment of Christ’s kingdom in the earth. So there have been antichrists in every age, and there are antichrists to-day. Opposition to Christ is the essential idea of the word; but it seems specially to refer to those who claimed that they themselves were christs—such as Barcochba. There is, however, a distinction to be drawn between false christs and antichrists. Compare Barcochba and Cerinthus. Are there many antichrists.—Better, “have there arisen.” St. John would check the disposition to fix the association of antichrist to any one person. And his caution is greatly needed in our day. What we require to see more clearly is, that antichrist may be a person, but it need not be: it may be a sentiment, a teaching, a doctrine, a social influence.
1 John 2:19. Went out from us.—The most dangerous form of antichrist is the heretical teaching of those who have belonged to Christ’s Church. They so easily make rival parties and sects. Perhaps St. John had in mind the Gnostics, who were recruited from members of the Christian Church. The Church in every age has been composed of nominal members and real members. Its peril has always lain in the uncertainty of the response of its nominal members to surrounding doubtful and evil influences. Those who have the “unction from the Holy One,” the Divine indwelling Spirit, are defended from the attractions of sectarianism and heresy. Their spiritual life, kept in health by the Holy Spirit, throws off all attacks of disease, as bodies do in which there is strong vitality.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 John 2:18-19
The Time of the Antichrists.—“It is the list time,” or more correctly, “it is a last hour.” By this figurative term the apostle indicates a time of severe conflict. We precisely express his meaning when we say, “Things are reaching a climax.” Much mistake has been made by taking the expression “last time” in a strictly temporal sense. What St. John meant to say was this, “Things are evidently coming to a point.” When we come to deal closely and philosophically with the term “last time,” we are compelled to see that so long as God lives, and is actively working, there cannot be any such thing as a “last time.” There never has been, and there never can be. Seemingly last things were only last of parts of a series. There never yet was an end that was not also a beginning,—just as you cannot destroy one particle of matter; you can only change its form and relations. The “last times” of St. John have come and gone, but the Christian ages continue; and every time in those ages when a great fight has arisen over some imperilled Christian truth has been a “last time” in St. John’s sense. The conflict over the “filioque” was a last time. The Arian struggle was a “last time.” The Reformation was a “last time.” Another point has too often escaped attention. The name “Christ” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word “Messiah,” and therefore the term “antichrist” is strictly referable to any one who opposes or denies the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, and all that it involved. But that was a particular phase of conflict which belonged exclusively to the times of St. John. For the Christian nations it is a controversy that is dead and gone, or lingering only, in a small way, in the controversy with the Jew. We have filled the term “antichrist” with our own meanings, and so have quite forgotten the very precise and limited connotation of the term in the time of the first Christian Church. In these verses three things are urged on attention.
I. The Christian Churches had been warned to expect antichrist.—“Ye have heard that antichrist shall come.” Warnings had been fully given by our Lord Himself (Matthew 24:5; Matthew 24:23-24). And it could not have been otherwise, human nature being what it is. Was ever anything provided for humanity, or proclaimed to humanity, which was not opposed? Was ever scientific theory or theological doctrine presented without arousing contradiction? Enthusiastic men may take up some new thing, and imagine that, unhindered, it is going to carry all before it; but it never does. It succeeds at all only by forcing its way through and against obstacles. Christianity is a Divine force, but it works, and can only work, under human conditions. It was a dream that it would go forth to conquer, in such a sense as that; crushing all opposition, it would never have any fighting to do. Our Lord never for one moment encouraged that delusion. The result of His coming would be to set men at variance; and His truth would have as big a fight as His people. It must be so; and it was better that it should be so. Man never can get his best things save through conflict. And it is in wrestlings against antichrists that the Christian truth has been at once unfolded and preserved. And it will always be kept in similar conflicts.
II. The antichrists had come, and proved to be many.—If the singular “antichrist” is employed, it is only as a collective or representative term. To find some single person answering to antichrist has been a kind of mania in the Church. There never was only one; there is not now; and there never will be. St. John does all that he can toward correcting that serious mistake when he says, “even now are there many antichrists,” suggesting as the conclusion of his sentence, “and how many more there will be by-and-by.” When once we have mastered the fact, that antichrists, in every age, are many, we are put upon the right lines for understanding what is meant by, and what is included in, the term. Whatever in the Church opposes the living authority and rule of the Lord Jesus is an antichrist. So it includes the moral opponent, the sensual teacher, quite as truly as the doctrinal opponent. And the very essence of the spirit of antichrist is this—setting some authority, based on the claims of self, against the authority of Christ.
III. The antichrists proved to be mischievous persons inside the Church.—The significance of 1 John 2:19 as an account of the antichrists that were in St. John’s mind has been overlooked. We have not to look for them outside the Churches. They were persons who had been until recently members of the Churches. They were apostates, who had found their position within the Church impossible, and so had left the Church, and were now making themselves as actively mischievous against the Church as they possibly could. And now we know the two classes from which the antichrists were recruited.
1. The Judaisers; or those who wanted to make religion—Christianity—a formality instead of a life. And such persons are antichrists in every age.
2. The philosophers; or those who wanted to make Christianity an opinion rather than a life. And it is equally true that such persons are antichrists in every age. Under the Judaiser, the false liberty that nourishes immorality is sure to flourish. Under the philosopher, the false pride that puts self between the soul and the living Christ is sure to flourish. Christ is holiness and humility. Antichrist is sensual indulgence, and self-aggrandisement, and everything that tends to nourish such evil things.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 John 2:19. Separation expressing Lost Harmony.—Some actual cases of self-willed separation from the Church had evidently occurred, and had been a source of much anxiety and distress. The voluntary withdrawal of members from Church fellowship always puts a slight upon the fellowship, and brings a feeling of unrest and suspicion to the remaining members. There is always danger of those who leave making a party. And St. John therefore tries to quiet the unrest, and prevent the enlargement of the mischief, by helping the members to look aright on the removal of these self-willed persons. Sooner or later things out of harmony, or persons out of harmony, will be sure to separate. Outside forces may act for a while and keep in relation those who are not in harmony. But the forces never succeed in holding on very long. The natural separation persists in working on beneath all the restraints; and the moment that the force holding them together is released, they break asunder. It is so in the Church of Christ. Members that are out of harmony, either with the moral tone, or with the primary religious truths of the Church, cannot long maintain their association with it. As St. John expressed it, “they are not of us.” They are not in sympathy with us. Their aims are not ours; their cherished thoughts are not ours; their first principles are not ours. And they cannot help it; they must go from us. If we stand firm in our loyalty to Christ, they will be sure to find themselves uncomfortable, and make some occasion for going away. And this is the point in which the want of harmony will most evidently appear. Supreme in the mind of the Church will be, the holiest admiration of Christ, the most loving loyalty to Christ, the full recognition of the living presence of Christ, and the absolute submission of the whole soul and life to His authority. In whatever sense self rules mind, and feeling, and life, the man will be out of harmony with all this. He will be antichrist; and when he finds he is, he knows he will be best away.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
1 John 2:18. The Pope as Antichrist.—It is singular to find that the See of Rome did not receive the appellation of antichrist first from its enemies the Protestants, but from its own leaders. Gregory himself (A.D. 590) started the idea by declaring that any man who held even the shadow of such power as the popes arrogated to themselves after his time would be the forerunner of antichrist. Arnulphus, bishop of Orleans, in an invective against John XV at Rheims (A.D. 991), intimated that a pope destitute of charity was antichrist. But the stigma was fixed, in the twelfth century, by Amalric of Bona, and also by the abbot Joachim (A.D 1202). Joachim said that the second apocalyptic beast represented some great prelate who will be like Simon Magus, and, as it were, universal pontiff, and that very antichrist of whom St. Paul speaks. Hildebrand was the first pope to whom this ugly label was affixed, but the career of Alexander VI. (Roderic Borgia) made it for ever irremovable for the Protestant mind. There is in the British Museum a volume of caricatures, dated 1545, in which occurs an ingenious representation of Alexander VI. The pope is first seen in his ceremonial robes; but a leaf being raised, another figure is joined to the lower part of the former, and there appears the papal devil, the cross in his hand being changed into a pitchfork. Attached to it is an explanation in German, giving the legend of the pope’s death. He was poisoned (1503) by the cup he had prepared for another man.—Conway.
1 John 2:19. One Fold and One Shepherd.—One evening I went out with a shepherd to collect his sheep. After they had been gathered together, and were being driven off the moor, I observed that there were some among them who did not belong to his flock. I particularly noticed, also, that he paid no attention whatever to these wandering strangers, urged forward though they were, by the barking dog, farther and farther from their rightful companions. At last, thinking I must have been mistaken in supposing they were not his, I pointed to one of them and said, “Are those your sheep?” And he answered “No.” I said unto him, “Why then do you not separate them from the flock?” And he answered and said, “They will find out directly they are not of us, and then they will go away of themselves.” And immediately I remembered the words of John, how he had said, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”—W. G. S.