1 John 5:21

Farewell Warning

Little children As usual (1Jn 2:1; 1 John 2:12; 1Jn 2:28, 1 John 3:7; 1 John 3:18; 1 John 4:4), this refers to all his readers.

keep yourselves Better, as R. V., guard yourselves. It is not the verb used in 1 John 5:18 (τηρεῖν) but that used 2 Thessalonians 3:3 (φυλάσσειν); -shall guardyou fromthe evil one". Both verbs occur John 17:12: comp. John 12:25; John 12:47. Here the verb is in the aorist imperative; -once for all be on your guard and have nothing to do with". The use of the reflexive pronoun instead of the middle voice intensifies the command to personal care and exertion (φυλάξατε ἑαυτά). This construction is frequent in S. John: John 1:8; John 3:3; John 7:4; John 11:33; John 11:55; John 13:4; John 21:1; Revelation 6:15; Revelation 8:6; Revelation 19:7.

from idols Or perhaps, from the idols; those with which Ephesus abounded: or again, from your idols; those which have been, or may become, a snare to you. This is the last of the contrasts of which the Epistle is so full. We have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, God and the world, Christ and Antichrist, life and death, doing righteousness and doing sin, the children of God and the children of the devil, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, the believer untouched by the evil one and the world lying in the evil one; and now at the close we have what in that age was the ever present and pressing contrast between the true God and the idols. There is no need to seek far-fetched figurative explanations of -the idols" when the literal meaning lies close at hand, is suggested by the context, and is in harmony with the known circumstances of the time. Is it reasonable to suppose that S. John was warning his readers against "systematising inferences of scholastic theology; theories of self-vaunting orthodoxy … tyrannous shibboleths of aggressive systems", or against superstitious honour paid to the "Madonna, or saints, or pope, or priesthood", when every street through which his readers walked, and every heathen house they visited, swarmed with idols in the literal sense; above all when it was its magnificent temples and groves and seductive idolatrous rites which constituted some of the chief attractions at Ephesus? Acts 19:27; Acts 19:35; Tac. Ann. iii. 61, iv. 55. Ephesian coins with idolatrous figures on them are common. -Ephesian letters" (Ἐφέσια γράμματα) were celebrated in the history of magic, and to magic the -curious arts" of Acts 19:19 point. Of the strictness which was necessary in order to preserve Christians from these dangers the history of the first four centuries is full. Elsewhere in N. T. the word is invariablyused literally: Acts 7:41; Acts 15:20; Romans 2:22; 1Co 8:4; 1 Corinthians 8:7; 1 Corinthians 10:19; 1Co 12:2; 2 Corinthians 6:16; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; Revelation 9:20. Moreover, if we interpret this warning literally, we have another point of contact between the Epistle and the Apocalypse (Revelation 9:20; Revelation 21:8). Again, as we have seen, some of the Gnostic teachers maintained that idolatry was harmless, or that at any rate there was no need to suffer martyrdom in order to avoid it. This verse is a final protest against such doctrine. Lastly, this emphatic warning against the worship of creatures intensifies the whole teaching of this Epistle; the main purpose of which is to establish the truth that the Son of God has come in the flesh in the Man Jesus. Such a Being was worthy of worship. But if, as Ebionites and Cerinthians taught, Jesus was a creature, the son of Joseph and Mary, then worship of such an one would be only one more of those idolatries from which S. John in his farewell injunction bids Christians once and for ever to guard themselves.

Amen Here, as at the end of the Gospel and the Second Epistle, -Amen" is the addition of a copyist. א AB and most Versions omit it. Such conclusions, borrowed from liturgies, have been freely added throughout N. T. Perhaps that in Galatians 6:18 is the only final -Amen" that is genuine; but that in 2 Peter 3:8 is well supported.