Main news for 3 March 2019

King James Version (en)

2 John, Chapter 1, verse 10

¹⁰ and to have nothing to do with those seducers that bring not the true doctrine of Christ Jesus

¹⁰If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed:

NOTES

Today two texts are read which, at first glance, are striking because their thoughts do not coincide. The Second Epistle of John can be called...

Addressing an unnamed “elect lady”, John speaks of confessing Christ as a necessary condition of Christian life. The apostle goes even further, asserting that whoever does not confess Jesus as the Messiah “does not have God”. Such a claim may seem debatable: hardly anyone would seriously venture to assert that no one in the world except Christians has any experience of communion with God. But the apostle's words become clearer in the context of his references to “deceivers” who “do not confess the Lord Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh”. These “deceivers” are not named, but it is not difficult to imagine whom he means.

The precise date of the letter is, of course, unknown, but it may have appeared after the catastrophe of AD 70, after the Romans' destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple following the anti-Roman revolt launched by the Zealots. This destruction had a profound effect on people's minds, and whereas before AD 70 Jewish messianism had been predominantly political, after AD 70 it began quite rapidly to turn into mystical messianism. The Messiah came to be seen no longer as an earthly king, but as a supernatural figure more like an angel than a human being. It is quite understandable that this mystical “messiah” bore very little resemblance to the real Messiah, Jesus.

Apparently, among such mystically minded “Christians”, certain myths even began to circulate: that the Messiah's human nature was a mere appearance, that He had never in fact been human, and other notions of this kind. Much later, these led to the emergence within the Church of Monophysitism, against which the Church had to wage a long and determined struggle. Such “mystical Christianity” was in no way compatible with Christian spiritual life, or indeed with normal spiritual life of any kind.

Of course, since Christ's coming, no communion with God is in fact possible without His participation. But His involvement in people's lives is by no means always apparent. Christ does not impose Himself on people, just as His heavenly Father does not impose Himself on them. Nevertheless, every instance of communion with God, if it is genuine, now involves Him, even if the person seeking God does not see Him. This statement, however, holds only for genuine communion with God.

If, instead of communion with God and Christ, a person begins to pursue “mystical” phantoms, mirages produced by their own fevered imagination, there can be no question of communion with God. The genuine, living Christ leads a person to God; images of Christ produced by human imagination lead them away from God. This is precisely what the apostle means when he speaks of confessing “Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh”. Otherwise, with an illusory Messiah, the Kingdom too will prove to be an illusion rather than a reality for the seeker.

John's words about not receiving into one's house those who do not confess the teaching of which the apostle speaks may appear to be a manifestation of extreme intolerance toward every different opinion. Meanwhile, the issue is nothing other than the person of Jesus Christ. If John had any teaching on which he insisted, it concerned precisely this question: who is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and the Messiah sent by God into the world, or simply a teacher, one of many who then existed?

Christianity itself consists in the answer to this question. If Christianity were simply a new religion, the apostle's position would indeed look unattractive: one might think that adherents of this new religion fear competition and prefer sectarian closedness to openness and dialogue. But Christianity is not a new religion; it is a new life. Life with Christ in His Kingdom.

Life that is inconceivable without trusting Jesus of Nazareth not only as Teacher, but also as Son of God, as Messiah, as King of that Kingdom whose inhabitant every Christian by definition must become. The one who does not receive Jesus in this way cannot be an inhabitant of the Kingdom. But can Christians receive only their own in their homes? Today such an approach may seem at least strange to us. But here it is important to take into account the features of ancient customs of hospitality in general, as well as Jewish customs of that era and the customs of the first Christians.

To greet a person in those days meant not simply to say "hello" to him, but also to invite him into one's home. And having invited him home, it was impossible not to give the guest food. One would necessarily have to sit with him at one table, sharing a meal, and therefore breaking bread. Jews, for example, never sat at one table with pagans precisely for this reason: in breaking bread a believing Jew blessed it in the name of the God of Abraham, while pagans remembered, often even if only symbolically, their pagan gods.

For a Jew, such a situation at least bordered on apostasy. For a Christian the situation was approximately the same, but here the issue was the breaking of bread in the name of Jesus; without mentioning this name, the breaking of bread was impossible for a Christian. And if someone for whom Jesus of Nazareth was an ordinary person ended up at the table together with Christians, there would be no common meal.

When some seek the meal of the Kingdom and others do not believe in such a possibility at all, the situation becomes at least ambiguous, and for everyone. It is in order to exclude this ambiguity that the apostle advises avoiding situations in which it would become possible. For every such ambiguity only distances a person from the Kingdom: both the one seeking the Kingdom and the one who does not yet know about it.

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