1 John 2:19 - Exposition

Deserters, self-revealers.

Connecting link: "Even now are there many antichrists" are the words we have just studied. Do not these words raise the question—But whence come these antichrists? The reply, as indicated by this verse, is painful enough. They went out from the bosom of the Church itself. They first espoused the cause of the Lord Jesus, and then from some cause or other took offence, went out, and since have fought against the very Saviour for whom they had vowed, with us, that they would live and die! Topic— An early defection from the Church, and how it is accounted for. Let us arrange our expansion of the teachings of this verse under two heads.

I. HERE IS A PAINFUL HISTORIC FACT , WITH AN APOSTLE 'S COMMENT THEREON .

1 . There had been a defection from the ranks of the faithful. They went out from us." How many questions we would like to ask the Apostle John about this! But details are not given us, nor are they accessible. We can gather little more than we have hinted at already, that some—many—of those who now ranked with the antichristian party had once sought admission to and found a home within the visible Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. What was the pressure put upon them from without we cannot tell; but outside pressure alone, however great, would not account for their apostasy.

2 . The apostle at once reaches a definite conclusion— that, though these deserters had once had a name and a place on the Christian roll, yet they had never known that living fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ which alone is the actual raison d'etre for Churches at all.

3 . This conclusion is something more than a decision of the judgment; it is a manifested fact. "That it might be made manifest that they all were not of us." £ "All." Without exception. They could not have drifted off from the ranks of Christ's followers and joined an antichristian heretical party if they had been really in Christ.

4 . Their defection was a Divine provision for the exposure of the hollowness of their profession. ἀλλ ̓ ἵνα φανερωθῶσιν "in order that," etc.; either they went out with that purpose, or God had that end in view. We cannot suppose the former. We are shut up to the latter. If there are hypocrites in the Church, God will not allow his Church to be wrecked by them, but will cause them somehow or other to be exposed to view. A gardener was once asked, "Why do so many pears fall off that tree?" "Oh! sir," was his reply, "it is only those that are rotten inside that fall off." Some there are who "receive the Word with joy," and "for a while believe;" but they have "no root in themselves, and in time of temptation fall away."

II. BOTH FACT AND COMMENT TEACH LESSONS OF PERMANENT VALUE .

1 . External Church-membership and vital fellowship with Christ and his people are by no means the same in substance or uniform in extent. The one is a form; the other is the reality of which the form is supposed to be the expression. If there is the reality, the form should follow. But it is quite possible for the form to be adopted without any such reality behind it. Judas. Demas. Achan.

2 . There may be much to attract adherents to a visible Church. The first outgushing of brotherly love and community of goods attracted Ananias and Sapphire. Success. "Nothing succeeds like success." When "religion walks in silver slippers" many will be ready to follow. Wealth. Power. Patronage. Splendour. Ornate services. All such features in the external framework and environment of Churches will attract numbers of adherents. And if such a phase of social life should show itself, as for it to be "the thing" to make a profession of religion, thousands will do it for the sake of going with the stream.

3 . Being in the external Church will not minister life, any more than it will prove its existence. If belonging to God's own Church is a sure means of salvation, these deserters would have been saved by union with it, specially when under the oversight of the Apostle John! But no! No Church on earth can minister spiritual life to any soul, by any ordinances whatever. What a scathing rebuke to "sacramental efficacy," or any such doctrine, is the fact indicated in our text! Note: John had once had to learn that a man might be with Christ, though he did not follow with the apostles. He has now had to learn that a man may follow with apostles, and yet not be with Christ.

4 . All such merely external adherents are but dead weights in a Church. They do not and cannot increase its living acting force; they are rather a drag on the body to which they are outwardly attached. When a living Church is encumbered with them it is like a living body tied to so many dead ones.

5 . It is even possible that many forms of antichristian evil may exist in such. "Many antichrists… they went out from us." A living faith in a living Lord ensures unity in all essential points. But if men are only dead professors, numberless forms of error may take root in them and bear poisonous fruit. If, e.g., it has been fashionable to belong to this or that Church, to repeat a form of sound words, and to accept such and such a creed merely because it is the law of the land, there is scarcely any form of pestiferous error which may not nestle beneath such hollowness as that. Nor can any order of Church life, however free in action, pure in creed, scriptural in government, or becoming in its forms of service, be proof against the intrusion of dead professors.

6 . Consequently, any external Church may require weeding to a very considerable extent. In such cases as those we have before us, this weeding process will often have to precede all others. The ground must be cleared of its cumberers, that the plants of grace may thrive the better.

7 . If Churches are on the whole loyal and sound, false men will "go out" from them. "They went out," etc. This is an effective yet potent kind of Church discipline, when Church ministration and testimony are so faithful and effective that false adherents spontaneously quit its ranks. Happy is the Church whose constitution is so sound that foreign substances expel themselves from its body! £

8 . Where this is not the case, God will in his providence use another and a sharper remedy. "Judgment must begin at the house of God" (cf. Isaiah 4:6 ). It may be:

All these may and will have a telling effect on formalists in the Churches in any age. Their defection will save the Church!

9 . Let us not be discouraged at the fact that we cannot prevent the intrusion of false members into the Church. Doubtless we should be glad enough of the charism of "discernment of spirits;" but we see that even in the apostle's lifetime that was not granted for their convenience. It did not then ensure a Church being proof against imposture. But God will not let the Church be fatally injured by aliens within. It may be annoyed; but antichrist shall be exposed, and the living fellowship saved. 10. Let each reader take home to himself three closely and sternly practical lessons.