Rebound revisited, part 8. 1Co 11:28; 1Jo 1:8-10; Eph 4:17; 2Ti 2:25

Title: Rebound revisited, part 8. 1CO 11:28; 1JO 1:8-10; EPH 4:17; 2TI 2:25.     

 

So we conclude that 1JO 1:8 was for the licentious Gnostic who believed that all matter was evil and so the body was evil and was going to do evil regardless so one might as well let it indulge its fleshly desires, but who also believed that the soul was so separated from the body that the soul was uncontaminated by sin and could, despite the fleshly indulgences of the body, reach the heights of the ultimate logos.

 

We also conclude that 1JO 1:10 was written for the ascetic Gnostic who also believed the body to be evil, since it was made of matter, but believed it could contaminate the soul so they denied the body all but the essentials to barely live and so concluded that they had reached sinless perfection.

 

Neither group believed that they needed the atonement of the blood of Christ, therefore neither group believed in forgiveness or cleansing since all matter was evil and so the body could never be used for righteousness.

 

For this reason they did not believe that the Christ was human and that the man Jesus was separate from the Christ, which descended upon Him after His baptism as the dove and left Him before His crucifixion so that just a man named Jesus died a horrible physical death, same as the thieves, and some sections of Gnosticism believed the crucifixion to just be all an illusion. This philosophy took the church by storm and is still in the minds of Christians today.

 

That said, I do not see that any of the verses in 1Jo are written to an unbeliever, although they may certainly have been Gnostic unbelievers in the churches at that time (~90AD) but John’s epistle is directed towards believers who were so influenced by this that they went astray, hated the brethren, and lost their true knowledge of Christ and His love.

 

We now shall summarize briefly the difference between Gnosticism and Christian teaching.

 

A.God and the World.

The Gnostics believed God is the ultimate, nameless, unknowable being called the "Abyss."

 

Doesn’t it sound just like satan to give a name to God that was the name of the super max prison in which satan’s greatest and most evil generals were imprisoned?

 

The Gnostic believed that God is perfect, but the material world is alien to the divine nature because it is completely evil. How, then, does it come to exist at all? What is the source of its imperfections and evils?

 

The fullness (pleroma) of deity could flow out in aeons or angels, all imperfect, with the highest of them being Christ and the lowest of them being physical only.

 

Pleroma and fullness are marvelous words that describe certain aspects of our relationship to the Father, Son and HS. False systems, including cults, which originate from false systems, take the same words and change their meaning so that they seem to the unknowing or uneducated to be in line with true Christianity, but it is a shell or a form of it without power. Satan, through the use of these systems has taken every wonderful word of God’s word and changed its meaning. Just think of faith, hope, and love for instance.

 

The highest aeon was more spiritual than the grade immediately below them. So numerous are the gradations that at the bottom the spiritual element is so diminished as to be practically eliminated until we get to the bottom of them all, which is the material world of mankind, including his physical body, which is the abode of evil, and which they called darkness.

 

In this way the gulf is bridged between God and mankind. The highest aeons approximate closely to the divine nature, so spiritual are they and so free from matter.

 

Gnosticism: The highest aeons form the highest hierarchy of angels, and these with many other grades of angelic hosts are to be worshiped.

 

COL 2:16 Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day — 

 

COL 2:17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

 

COL 2:18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind [the mind and the flesh are not separate],

 

COL 2:19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

 

COL 2:20 If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as,

 

COL 2:21 "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!"

 

COL 2:22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with the using) —  in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?

 

COL 2:23 These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

 

The evil matter was organized by the demiurge who wasn’t necessarily evil, but flawed, and he invented Judaism and much of Christianity and so both are flawed. Therefore the OT was flawed as was the new. You may have wondered why certain cults have extrabiblical books and here we see the origin of the book of Mormon, the Watchtower (JW), and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Mary Baker Eddy Christian Science). They believed the scripture to be flawed and not the work of the eternal one and so more was needed and these false teachers provided it. This is so prevalent that it has gone to the extent that each of these have said that their writings are of more value than the Bible.

 

In opposition to this view, Christian faith worships God as the free self-sufficient Creator, infinitely good and wise and powerful and holy, the Author of all things, and affirms creation as an incomprehensible fact which is revealed to faith and which rises above the grasp of the understanding (cf. HEB 11:3).

 

HEB 11:3

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

 

B. Sin and Evil. Gnosticism: The divine fullness (pleroma) continues to unfold as its successive grades sink farther and farther from God’s purity down to matter itself which is the source of all evil.

 

As life becomes feebler as it progresses from the Christ to the highest angels to the lesser angels and then down to man and matter, more evil gets entwined with the spiritual. None are perfect; not even the Christ, but the source of evil is the matter itself. So if you can, through the secret knowledge of the Gnostics distance your soul away from the matter and reach the highest heights of that gnosis then you can be saved or redeemed, but not through Christ. There was no crucifixion and no redemption through the Christ.

 

Some taught that Christ replaced the OT God who was angry and mean, but neither of them are God, but aeons of high order who are flawed.

 

The great evil in this is that no one needs acknowledge sin or evil in their lives because these things don’t originate from free will but from physical matter.

 

Whenever people are not content with acknowledging evil to be the act of their own free will which has chosen to forsake its absolute dependence upon God, one of two results follows.

 

When sin and evil are not acknowledged to be a result of free will two systems must follow: 1. God is the cause of evil (monism). 2. The existence of an evil power beyond God’s control (dualism).

 

They either limit the holiness of God, and find the cause of evil in God Himself, thus annihilating all distinction between good and evil — which is monism; or they limit the power of God by granting the existence of an eternal evil power beyond the control of God — which is dualism.

 

Gnostics accepted the dualistic solution, ascribing evil to an eternal self-subsistent nature. Yet in this there is a great contradiction. If God is eternal and self-existent and He cannot be evil then the evil self-existence must be God as well, but if the evil god is not God or is equal to God, then who decided what was good or evil? One would have to envision a third God who was good and who created the good god and the evil god. Yet if that is true then the good and evil gods are not self-existing. And around and around it goes. If they were questioned on this they would reply that the questioner doesn’t understand the secret gnosis that the normal Christian could never hope to understand. All false systems use that as their duct tape so to speak.

 

1TI 6:20

O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments [contradictory notions] of what is falsely called "knowledge"

 

1CO 1:18 For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

 

1CO 1:19 For it is written [ISA 29:14],

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside."

 

1CO 1:20 Where is the wise man [Greek philosopher]? Where is the scribe [Judiazer]? Where is the debater of this age [both loved the debate]? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

 

1CO 1:21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

 

He mimics the words of Christ,

 

LUK 10:21

At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, "I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent and didst reveal them to babes. Yes, Father, for thus it was well-pleasing in Thy sight.

 

1CO 1:22 For indeed Jews ask for signs [not just miracles but direct signs or tokens from heaven], and Greeks search for wisdom [philosophic demonstrations instead of faith];

 

1CO 1:23 but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness,

 

1CO 1:24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

 

1CO 1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

 

It’s not just wiser than men’s wisdom or more powerful than men’s power, but is wiser and more powerful than men period.

 

1CO 1:26 For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;

 

1CO 1:27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world [in reference to the cosmic system] to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world [in reference to the world] to shame the things which are strong,

 

1CO 1:28 and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are,

 

1CO 1:29 that no man should boast before God.

 

1CO 1:30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption,

 

1CO 1:31 that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord."

 

Directly contrary to the false creation and false understanding of the origins of sin and evil is the Christian doctrine, according to which:

 

Christian doctrine: Sin is defiance of God. Evil is the refusal of the creature to lean absolutely and utterly upon God in grace, depending on His care and love.

 

Sin is defiance of God; it is moral transgression or the transgression of righteousness, or going out of bounds of righteousness, or missing the mark.

 

The magnitude of sin cannot be exaggerated - it would dethrone God if it could. It has defied His righteousness, holiness, wisdom, and even His grace.

 

All sin has been paid for by Christ on the cross. The unbeliever who rejects Christ’s gift falls under direct judgment. The believer, thus reconciled, redeemed, sanctified and justified is wholly dependent on God to overcome the power of sin and evil (darkness) in his own life and its ill effects.

 

It is the resolve of the sinful will to make itself independent of God and to renounce His authority. Sin is self-will, false independence, freedom which ends in bondage and misery.

 

Hence the very real need to move from walking in darkness to walking in light. What caused damage and misery, what is independent from God and opposed to God is not the environment of the new creature in Christ and it will rob him of all faith, all confidence, all joy, and all love. John as well as Paul were God’s champions in exposing this falsehood and beseeching believers who had fallen under its evil to “no longer” walk in darkness but to walk in the light as children of the light.

 

But in Gnosticism sin is something quite different; it is only a physical fact or quality inherent in the body and in matter everywhere.

 

Gnosticism - sin is a quality inherent in all matter and so redemption is not from Christ, but from a person’s efforts to secure emancipation from the flesh through special knowledge.

 

Redemption to the Gnostic, therefore, does not consist in the work of Jesus Christ for us on the cross, and nor does the spiritual life consist of applying of the benefits of that work by the Holy Spirit in the renewal of mind through doctrine.

 

Redemption is simply each person's efforts to secure emancipation from the flesh — from physical evil.

 

I have discovered that all the major cults have emanated from this Gnostic system some form.

 

A system of this kind has no need of Christ and leaves no place for redemption in the Christian sense of that term.

 

Redemption in this scheme of thought is not deliverance from sin; it is not removal of condemnation and renewal of the mind. It is something quite different.

 

It consists in the restoration of the cosmic order and the illumination of the mind of the select few through knowledge.

Christ is not the Savior who saves His people from their sins, and who gives them unceasingly, through union with Himself, deliverance from the power of sin in their lives.