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1 John 4:2–3
“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.”
False teachers did not wait until the death of the Apostles to infiltrate the church, as seen in 1 John 4:2–3. Already during the Apostolic age, some people were trying to convince the church of error. Today’s passage confronts the heresy of Docetism.
Docetism can be viewed as an error that emphasizes the deity of Christ at the expense of His humanity. The name of the heresy comes from the Greek word dokeō, which means “to seem” or “to appear,” because Docetists taught that Jesus did not really come in the flesh. He only appeared to be human, meaning that the Son of God never truly added to Himself a human body and soul.
Many false teachers incorporated Docetic teachings into other heresies. Several individuals in a group called the Gnostics also said that Jesus never really came in the flesh. Gnostics followed the heresy of Gnosticism, which is an umbrella term under which many different ideas fell. Fundamental to all forms of Gnosticism, however, was the view that the material world is inherently evil. Only spiritual reality matters, and salvation is attained by receiving a secret body of knowledge that was passed down from the Apostles to one teacher after another outside the visible church (gnōsis is the Greek word for “knowledge”). Gnostics such as Marcion taught that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were different beings. Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, was an evil demiurge or semidivine being who made the material world. Christ’s Father, the God of the New Testament, sent Jesus to teach us how we can be rescued from our material existence. Neither the Father nor Jesus had any involvement in creating the world.
It should be obvious that the errors of Docetism and Gnosticism leave no room for many fundamental biblical truths. These heresies deny that God originally made the world very good through His only begotten Son and eternally proceeding Holy Spirit (Gen. 1; John 1:3). Irenaeus, an important early church father, writes in his work Against Heresies, “For with [God the Father] were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things.”
Heresies such as Docetism and Gnosticism must also deny Christ’s atoning for us as a man to redeem us. With no incarnation and no human nature, there is no crucifixion. This leaves us without hope, for the cross is the power of God for salvation (1 Cor. 1:18).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Since death came into creation by man, our final salvation—the resurrection—could come only through a man, the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:21). Of course, Jesus is more than a mere man, being the very incarnate God. Nevertheless, He is truly man, and because of what He did in His humanity, we can be saved. We must be careful never to emphasize the deity of Christ in such a way that we make His humanity superfluous.
For further study
- Isaiah 52:13–53:12
- John 20:24–29
- 1 Timothy 2:5
- Hebrews 9:11–15
The bible in a year
- Job 38–39
- Acts 15:1–21