On the Epistles of John, Part 10: The Spirit, the Water and the Blood
Writing this first and most significant of his three surviving epistles, the apostle John began describing the love which is in the law in chapter 2 where, speaking of Christ, he wrote: “3 And by this we may know that we know Him, if we would keep His commandments. 4 He saying that he knows Him and not keeping His commandments, he is a liar and the truth is not in him. 5 But he whom would keep His word [God’s Word], truly the love of Yahweh is perfected in him: by this we know that we are in Him.” Following that point, throughout chapters 3 and 4 of this epistle John spoke of the love of Yahweh God which He has for His children, and upheld that love as the reason for which those same children should love one another. So in chapter 3 of the epistle, John also asserted that the love which the children of God have for one another serves as the assurance that they have eternal life, where he wrote: “14 We know that we have passed over from out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” On the surface, John seems to be using the term brother quite loosely, as a fellow man or fellow believer, but that is clearly not the case once it is understood that the Gospel of Christ is the only manner which men have to distinguish the wheat from the tares. So as he continued, he stated that “He not loving [his brother] abides in death.”
As Paul of Tarsus had often attested, there are brethren and there are false brethren. Paul counted his brethren as his “kinsmen according to the flesh” in Romans chapter 9. But in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 he spoke of having faced “perils among false brethren”, and then in Galatians chapter 2 speaking of certain Judaizers, those who would bind men to rituals of the flesh, he called them “false brethren, such who infiltrate to spy out our freedom, which we have in Christ Yahshua, in order that they may enslave us…” Paul had referred to the same in Acts chapter 20 where he warned the elders of Ephesus of the “oppressive wolves [which] shall come in to you, not being sparing of the sheep!” Paul distinguished those wolves from men who would arise from among themselves who may speak distortions, ostensibly creating their own heresies.
Likewise, in his brief epistle the apostle Jude warned that “4 … some men have stolen in, those of old having been written about beforetime for this judgment, godless men, substituting the favor of our God for licentiousness and denying our only Master and Prince, Yahshua Christ.” Historically, there has been little open acceptance of the sort of licentiousness found at Sodom and Gomorrah until recent times, and now both priests and pastors generally and openly accept, and even promote, all sorts of sin, including Sodomy and fornication, in their congregations. So today many churches are even being run by these godless intruders.