Gone Too Far

“Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”—2 John 1:9

Thomas Jefferson, one of the great founding fathers of the United States of America, created his own version of the New Testament. He disbelieved in miracles and anything else that could be considered supernatural, so he went through the New Testament and literally cut from the Bible any of the miracles or teachings of Christ that did not fit within a naturalistic worldview. His version of the New Testament, then, was devoid of any miracles, and was nothing more than some moralistic teachings of a Jewish rabbi. Jefferson sought to create a different and, in his mind, a plausible Jesus who fit more into his own view of the world, but his Jesus, as we know, is not the real Jesus of the Scriptures, for the Jesus of the Scriptures is the miracle-working, life-giving, God-man who turned water into wine, made blind men see, the lame walk, enabled the deaf to hear, and the dead to rise again. Jefferson went too far in creating his version of the New Testament. Rather than seeing himself in the image of God, he created a god in his own image.

In 2 John, the Apostle John is writing to a group of believers who had undergone a serious attack by false teachers. These men had infiltrated the ranks of the church, became teachers, and then injected the people with a spiritual toxin that made the saints doubt God, their salvation, and who was or was not a real brother or sister in Christ.

John writes to them, reminding them who is of God and who is not. He writes about those who went on ahead of the teachings of Christ and didn’t remain in them. The word “abide” in Greek means “remain.” We are to “remain” in the teaching of Christ by doing what the Word of God says to do. We don’t try and second-guess the Scriptures, nor do we try to create doctrines that are not there. We don’t try and create our own version of the Word of God, but let the Word stand on its own. We do what the Bible says that we are to do and we wait patiently.

Satan will continually try to get us to doubt God’s Word and His will for our lives. He masquerades as an angel of light in order to deceive us, which means that he makes his lies sound like truth, holy and righteous, but they are not. They are lies—always have been and will always be—lies. Our goal is to stay in the truth, to not go away from it, not dilute it, not add anything to it. We don’t look to wives’ tales, personal experiences, self-help books, false Bible teachers, or astrology and the like. WE go to the Word of God and it alone. Anything else is idolatry and is sinful.

The question that I have for each of us is this: Where do we look for guidance? Are we going to the Word or are we looking to the world? Are we looking to magazines, TV shows, self-help gurus, life-coaches, astrology, false-religions, or something other than the Word? If so, turn away from it. It may promise hope and life, but it is simply another bait from the enemy that he employs to steal you away from God!

The best guidance…the truest and most faithful guidance, is found in God’s Word! Let’s remain in the teaching of the Word, seeking not to go ahead or run behind, but keeping our eyes on the Word, allowing God to use it to direct us into Him who is all truth. Amen.