NOTES for Jo2 1:8
What wants to say the apostle, by exhorting his coreligionists to "look to themselves" not to lose the promised reward? Of which loss is it about? And why is it especially necessary to look to oneself, so that everything should be in order? According to the context of the statement, one can think that it is about doctrine, about orthodoxy, which is necessary to be kept, otherwise there is a risk of losing the Kingdom, and with it salvation. At first sight, such an exhortation is completely natural: the representatives of any religious doctrine (as, indeed, any other) are always of a certain degree worried about the purity of their own ranks, including the purity, so to say, ideological: because any religious community needs followers, capable of spreading the doctrine and make new members. But indeed Christianity is not a religion, but life in that Kingdom the Savior brought to the world. In order to be its resident, it is necessary to be faithful not to the idea, neither to the doctrine and nor to the dogma, but to God and to Christ, the Torah and the Gospel. It is a question of not as much opinions, as of the practical life, not as much orthodoxy, as of the orthopraxy. But why then we have here questions on orthodoxy? Can they influence this life in the Kingdom, which is the essence of Christianity? It is obvious that, even if such an influence is possible, then it will be only in one aspect: in the aspect of the relationships linking the residents of the Kingdom with God, with Christ and with the neighbors. The relationships of man with God and with the neighbors in an exhaustive way are described and regulated by the Torah, for them the Decalogue is enough. But here is, the relationships with Jesus in many depend on who sees in Him the man coming to him.
The question of Jesus: who people say I am? And who do you think I am? is addressed in fact to each of us. And we have to answer to this question each time when we shall want to share with Him the meal at the time of the breaking of bread in church meeting. Apparently, already in the time of John in the Church and around it there were many Gnostics, for whom Jesus was never a Person, who were ready to see in Him rather an angel or certain higher spirit. And the spiritual danger was here not the non-orthodoxy as such, but in the fact that such an opinion on Jesus made impossible for man the transfiguration, and consequently the membership for the Kingdom, at least in this life.
Well then lost their sense the breaking of bread, and the existence of the Church itself: because "the body of Christ", by the definition of other apostle, in such a case it could in no way be, and in other quality it could give to man nothing that couldn’t give to him the Synagogue. The orthodoxy in itself had never been necessary for the Church, it could in itself be necessary only for the structures of church, as a parasite on it. And to the Church it was always necessary only from the point of view of this main question that Jesus gave in His time to the apostles: and you who do you think I am? Because from its answer depends the possibility of life in the Kingdom. And thus, and the possibility of salvation.