1 John 5:21 Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. By the "true God" St. John means the God not only truth speaking, but true in essence, genuine, real; by "shadows" or "idols" he means the false principles which take possession of the senses — the unreal reflections of the only Real. There was in deed plenty of need for this warning in St. John's day and in the Churches under his care. Perhaps the antithesis of Christianity and the world is not now so sharply apparent. But the contrast still exists. Although the twilight realm may be vast, yet broad and deep are the shadows which men take for realities, and live in them, and worship them, and believe in them. Can there be a more evident example of shadow worship than the devotion of the world to the material — which in reality is the immaterial? In every form of matter there is indeed the hint of God, but it is a hint only, the pledge of the reality, not the great Reality Itself. It is from heedlessness of this great truth that the First Commandment of the Decalogue, which some imagine completely needless for themselves, is perhaps really more necessary than any of the other nine. For all around us is a world worshipping sham gods of its own deification. How then does Christ teach us the eternal distinction between shadows and realities? In His temptation we have exhibited to us the whole matter in a nutshell. Temptation is the battle of alternatives, the choice between the high and the low, the real and the shadowy. Alexander, conqueror of the world, wept for worlds beyond to conquer: Caesar, with his hand grasping Satan's gift of the world empire, dreamed of something more real when he told the Egyptian priest he would give up all, even Cleopatra herself, to discover the mysterious sources of the Nile. It is this reality, this wider con quest, this source of eternal life, which has been man's search in all his philosophies and religious systems. Napoleon, beset with quagmires in Egypt, bade his officers ride out in all directions, the first to find firm ground to return and lead the way for the rest. So man's heart has bidden him ride out in every direction to seek the Real, and St. John comes back from his fellowship with Jesus, and cries, "This is the real God and the life which is eternal. Little children, guard yourselves from the sham gods." (H. H. Gowen.) Parallel Verses KJV: Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. |
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