Skip to main content

1 John 2:23: No one Who Denies the Son has the Father


1 John 2:23
[23] No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. (ESV)

There is a desire by so many people to believe the notion that all faiths are essentially the same.  As long as we believe in some kind of god that is all that matters.  People want to believe in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.  We are all to basically try to be kind to one another and God our Father is pleased with us. This is at the heart of what some would call the interfaith movement.

One of the things that I have discovered with any involvement with those who ascribe to an interfaith philosophy is that the one who ultimately suffers is Jesus Christ.  If you are going to blend faiths or religious ideas what do you do with Jesus?  Jesus made such bold claims that set him apart from all others that it is truly impossible to embrace other faiths and truly follow Him.

The false teachers were trying to embrace a faith that denied the deity of Jesus Christ.  The Apostle John rightly tells them that as a result of denying the Son (Jesus Christ) they have not only lost relationship with the Son, but they have no relationship with the Father either.  It is interesting to note that John was a Jew.  He knew that the Jews had rejected the deity of Jesus Christ and had him nailed to a tree.  John's indictment of the false teachers applied to his fellow Jews whom he loved.  The Jews claimed to have God as their father, but because they denied the Son, they had no relationship with either the Father or the Son.

We must be very careful with what we believe about Jesus.  You cannot be a Christian and deny the truth claims of Jesus Christ.  You cannot have a relationship with God the Father and reject the Son.  Interfaith fails at being any kind of true faith at all because it denies the Son.  Be careful that you do not align yourself with those who have no faith.

I will leave you today with some powerful words from the late C. S. Lewis concerning the unique truth claims of Jesus Christ:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

 ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Romans 8:18: For I Consider That The Sufferings Of This Present Time Are Not Worth Comparing

Romans 8:18 [18] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (ESV) Perspective. What an important word. Let's be honest. We do not like the idea of suffering. We will do almost anything to avoid any kind of suffering. Some churches have gone so far as to preach against the idea of suffering, declaring it to not be a part of the true believer's life. Paul is not shy about the topic. Paul uses the sufferings of this present time as a means to consider the greater glory that awaits us. Perspective. Paul is not in any way attempting to diminish our suffering. A view toward eternity puts our suffering in a proper understanding. Yes, our suffering is terrible. In the grand scheme of eternity it is not even worth comparison. Maybe you are thinking that Paul does not know what he is talking about when it comes to suffering. In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul describes countless beatings, often near death,
2 comments
Read more

Romans 11:24: For If You Were Cut From What Is By Nature A Wild Olive Tree, And Grafted, Contrary To Nature, Into A Cultivated Olive Tree . . .

Romans 11:24 [24] For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree. (ESV) We continue looking at the illustration of an olive tree. The root of the tree is the covenant relationship relationship of God with Abraham. Abraham's faith is what this spiritual tree is built on. The first branches would have been the faithful people of Israel, who like Abraham, placed their faith in God. They believed God, just like Abraham, and it was credited to them as righteousness. There were branches of the people of Israel who never placed their faith in God. Because these branches were not true followers of God they were broken off of the tree. Faith in God was the essential element that made the branches true branches of this spiritual tree. Some branches remained. Others, the faithless unbelievers, were removed. After Jesu
6 comments
Read more

Romans 15:20-21: And Thus I Make It My Ambition To Preach The Gospel, Not Where Christ Has Already Been Named

Romans 15:20–21 [20] and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, [21] but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.” (ESV) We need to be reminded continually that the message of the Gospel is intended to move all across the world. Jesus said that his followers were to preach the Gospel, starting in Jerusalem, and continue preaching the Gospel to the whole world. Christians have not always been good at delivering the Gospel message as far and as often as they should. In the first century church it took intense persecution to motivate the disciples in Jerusalem to bring the Gospel to Judea and Samaria. Once the disciples fled to new regions they shared the Gospel wherever they went. Would the disciples have preached the Gospel without the persecution? We may never know. Some probably would have stayed in their co
Post a Comment
Read more