84 - 1Jn 5:20-21
Οἴδαμεν δὲ ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἥκει, καὶ δέδωκεν ἡμῖν διάνοιαν ἵνα γινώσκωμεν τὸν ἀληθινόν. καί ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεὸς, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ αἰώνιος. Τεκνία, φυλάξατε ἑαυτοὺς ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων. ἀμήν.
Since the two previous verses are opposed, as asyndeta, to the twentieth, which is connected with them by δέ [“and”], we may at once infer that 1Jn 5:18-19 contain in some sense two parallel thoughts, to which 1Jn 5:20 presents one that corresponds similarly to both of them. And so we find it. The previous verses alleged that we know in what relation our divine sonship places us to sin and to the world: here it is unfolded that we are conscious of the ground of this relation to both. Christ by His manifestation has given us the knowledge of Him that is true, and thereby furnished us with the right view of our relation to God and the world. This we have in the διάνοια [“understanding”], and with it the relation of 1Jn 5:20 to what has preceded. The word διάνοια [“understanding”] comes most frequently before us in Old Testament quotations, where it is, as generally or often in the Septuagint, the translation of לֵב [“heart”] or קֶרֶב [“inward part”]. But in all instances of its occurrence, apart from such an Old Testament foundation, it seems to have a narrower signification, corresponding to its conjunction with διά [“through”], that of the discerning and distinguishing thought, or the faculty of distinction. This it is most clearly in 2Pe 3:1: the apostle would stimulate the εἰλικρινὴςδιάνοιαν [“sincere mind”] of the church ἐνὑπομνήσει [“by way of a reminder”], by means of its remembrance. The εἰλικρινὴς [“sincere”] itself suggests the gift of discernment: it signifies that which approves itself pure under the keenest test (κρίνω [“I judge”]), under the light of the sun (εἴλη[LSJ] [“sunlight”], cf. ἥλιος [“the rays of the sun”]). And the same meaning is confirmed by its connection with what follows: the church should distinguish, by means of their discerning faculty, the teaching of the false prophets from the true apostolical παράδοσις [“tradition”]. Similarly, in Eph 4:18,[N] the ἐσκοτισμένοιτῇδιανοίᾳ [“ones darkned in understanding”] are those whose faculty of discernment was so obscured that they had lost any standard for the distinction of good and evil, divine holiness and worldly corruption. The ματαιότηςτοῦνοός [“futility of the mind”] consists in this, that the Gentiles had absolutely no sentiment of the baseness of the change between the divine life and utter impurity (ἀπηλγηκότεςτῇἀσελγείᾳ [“callousness of sensuality” cf. Eph 4:19]). It is not otherwise in 1Pe 1:13, where the ἀναζωσάμενοι τὰς ὀσφύας τῆς διανοίας ὑμῶν [lit. “gird the loins of your mind”] as predicate to τελείωςἐλπίσατε [“set your hope completely”] indicates that the church must, by a keen and sure discrimination (διάνοια [“understanding”]), sever all other objects from their hope, and hold fast to that of the revelation of Christ. This special meaning of διάνοια [“understanding”] comes out with less precision in the two other passages, Eph 2:3 and Col 1:21. In the former, the plural permits only a more general reference; it is obvious that the διάνοια [“understanding”] must not be referred to the various individuals, as if the διάνοια [“understanding”] were ascribed to each of them, but the plural διανοιῶν [“understandings”] must be referred to each individual. In Col 1:21, however, it should be observed that the pregnant expression ἐχθροὺςτῇδιανοίᾳ [“enemies in the mind”] does not so much signify that the soul is the seat or sphere of the enmity, as that the ground of the enmity lay in their own thinking and in their own personal decision, so that the meaning we considered above glimmers through this text also. But as to our passage in this Epistle the meaning of discerning faculty admirably suits, and it alone suits. Christ has given us διάνοιαν [“understanding”], not τὴνδιάνοιαν [“the understanding”]: not the fulness of all spiritual ability had been imparted to man, but, as the absence of the article shows, with reference to the particular point in question, the power to discern the true God, and to recognise, as opposed to Him the true God, the false gods (εἴδωλα [“those perceive”]). But this knowledge is also the ground of that other, by which we know ourselves as God’s children to be separated from sin, while the world on the other hand lies in the wicked one. Thus our verse approves itself to be the foundation on which the two former rest. The central and fundamental fact is by δέ [“and”] set over against them, as they are the consequences of it; while at the same time the particle defines this to be the supreme matter. This διάνοια [“understanding”] is, more closely examined, the gift of the Son of God who has come: ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἥκει [“the Son of God has come”]. Christ is here described as the Son of God, because He alone as ὁἐκτοῦοὐρανοῦκαταβὰς [“the one who came down from heaven”] (Joh 3:13) can impart the knowledge of the Father; which knowledge, however. He has imparted by the very fact of His coming. He that knows Him who has come has received thereby the gift of διάνοια [“understanding”]; for he acknowledges Jesus as the light, and has come to a clear perception about light and darkness generally. The gift of διάνοια [“understanding”] enables us to know τὸνἀληθινόν [“the true one”]. This expression is an elect one of St. John, for we find it very seldom outside of his writings. It is not synonymous with ἀληθής [“true”]. We have perceived in ἀληθής [“true”] and ἀλήθεια [“truth”] an absolute property, but ἀληθινός [“true”] is a relative idea, and signifies what corresponds to its name and the nature that name expresses. The present passage refers back to Joh 17:3: αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ αἰώνιος ζωὴ, ἵνα γινώσκωσί σε τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν Θεὸν, καὶ ὃν ἀπέστειλας Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν [“This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”]. Not only have we in our verse ἀληθινόςΘεός [“true God”] again and His Son Jesus Christ, but also the ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”], and that in both cases as the gift of the Son of God. The Father is here termed ἀληθινός [“true”]; without the addition of Θεός [“God”]: He is the Being who alone in the highest degree corresponds with His name. But not only do we know to discern Him as the True from all dis ficticiis; we are also in this only true God (καί ἐσμεν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ [“and we are in him who is true”]), and that in virtue of our being in His Son (ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ [“in his Son Jesus Christ”]). For it is impossible on grammatical and logical grounds to refer the second ἀληθινός [“true”] as it were to Christ, and to interpret: “we are in Him that is true, that is, in His Son Jesus Christ,” as if the second ἐν [“in”] were in explanatory opposition , to ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ [“in him who is true”]. When we simply hear the two propositions, “we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true,” it is the most obvious thing to understand in both cases Him that is true of the same subject. And how very harsh would be the apposition: “we are in Him that is true,—that is to say, in His Son, the Son of Him that is true.” The same meaning, that we now in fellowship with Christ have also fellowship with God, is obtained by our interpretation; only that the clause is much more simple, if we take the second ἐν [“in”] as a statement of the means through which we attain to the εἶναι ἐντῷἀληθινῷ [“to be in him who is true”]. But the question whether Christ is here called ἀληθινόςΘεός [“true God”] is not yet settled. It has to be determined whether the οὗτός [“this”] of the next proposition refers to the locally and immediately preceding subject, υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ [“Son of God”], or to the more distant antecedent God. Taking the former view, there arises the difficulty, never yet solved by any one, that Christ, after the Father has just been called ὁἀληθινόςscilicetΘεός [“the true”namely,“God”], could be termed, indeed, ἀληθινόςΘεός [“true God”], but not ὁἀληθινός[“the true one”]. Further, a testimony to the one true God seems more in harmony with the final warning against idols than a demonstration of the divinity of Christ: the former and not the latter forms the true antithesis to idols. Against the reference of οὗτός [“this”] to God, appeal has been made to the distance of this antecedent, as well as to the tautology which would issue from three repetitions of the same thought. This last reason in particular would have some weight if οὗτός [“this”] were a simple resumption of the one idea ἀληθινός[“true one”]; for the idea then resulting, “This true God is the true God,” is, in fact, tautological enough. But it is otherwise if οὗτός [“this”] refers to all that had been said of God before: “this God, whom Christ has taught us to know, and with whom through His Son we have been brought into living union, is the true God.” Then the proposition is not pure tautology; but it emphasizes at the close that only that God has a claim to the name just assigned Him of true, who has been made known in Christ to the world and to the individual Christian. This view is supported by the fundamental text of Joh 17:3, where the knowledge of God and that of Christ are exhibited as equal factors in eternal life, just as here; only that, while there they are presented together as simply co-ordinate, here the internal relation of the one to the other is indicated (ἐν τῷ υἱῷ κ.τ.λ. [“in the Son, etc.”]). The connection is also distinctly in favour of it. Our Epistle is directing its final address to Christians, and in its own way demands of them what another author speaks of as ἀφεῖναι τὸντῆςἀρχῆςλόγον [“to leave the word of the beginning”fn] and the φέρεσθαιἐπὶτὴντελειότητα [“to press on to maturity” cf. Heb 6:1]: this being so, its last exhortation to keep themselves from idols could not refer to gross idolatry; such a dehortation would most inharmoniously fit the tenor of the whole document. The εἴδωλα [“those perceived”] are rather the ideas entertained of God by the false prophets of whom the apostle has spoken, the antichrists, who, because they have not the Son, have not the Father also, without being therefore atheists in the common meaning of the word. But the antithesis to their ειδώλοις [“idols”] is not Christ the Logos, but the Father revealed in the Son. All the heretics of that time would serve God. Against them is held up the proposition that οὗτός [“this”], that is, this God revealed in Christ, is alone the true God, all else is an εἴδωλον [“idol”]. But not only is God robbed of His honour; not only does man serve a false god when he seeks another God than the God revealed in Christ; but he also trifles away his own salvation, for this only is eternal life (the article before ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”] must be struck out): he that hath Him hath thereby life. He hath, according to John 5:1-47, the life in Himself; and the life which the Son has and is, is πρὸςτὸνπατέρα [“before the Father” cf. Joh 5:45] as it is παρὰτοῦπατρός [“from the Father” cf. Joh 6:45]. There is not the slightest difficulty in the fact that the Father is here described as ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”], whilst elsewhere the Son is so described; on the contrary, this is in harmony with the close of the Epistle. In its beginning the apostle set out with the ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”] which the λόγος [“word”] is, and which is in Him; here all flows back to the primal source of all life, to whom the ἀπαύγασμακαὶχαρακτὴρὑποστάσεωςαὐτοῦ [“radiance and exact representation of his nature” cf. Heb 1:3] has opened the way of access, and with whom He has placed us in fellowship, ἵνα ᾖ ὁ Θεὸς πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν [“so that God may be all in all” cf. 1Co 15:28]. But this supreme end must be firmly maintained, there must be no recession from it: every moment that we forget that only the God revealed in Christ is ὁ ἀληθινὸς Θεὸς καὶ ζωὴ αἰώνιος [“the true God and eternal life”] would place us in fellowship with the ειδώλοις [“idols”]. Hence the penetrating word of the apostle is a warning to avoid them. The first glance shows that the last verses (1Jn 5:18-21) are not designed perfectly to recapitulate the entire contents of the Epistle. There is not in them any reference to brotherly love, which has nevertheless made up half the substance of it down to the close. But this, indeed, has come into consideration only as the expression of a true relation to God and the means of obtaining it. From this last everything flows, and to it everything leads. Hence we have in these last verses a final emphasis laid on the fundamental principles on which the Epistle rests: that we through the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ have fellowship with God; that this fellowship protects us from sin, and establishes us in a relation of perfect opposition to the world. But, indeed, the threefold plural οἴδαμεν [“we know”], the consciousness of common relationship to God as His children, suggests the principle and always energetic impulse to brotherly love; and thus this common consciousness, as containing in itself the bond with God and with our brethren, is the pledge of the χαρὰ τετελειωμένη [“joy made perfect”] which the apostle promised in the beginning of the Epistle to bring to maturity, and to maturity through the establishment of fellowship with God and the brethren.