"Little children, keep yourselves from idols." You are very familiar with that phrase. These are the apostle John's words of advice and warning to the people he fondly called little children and genuinely loved.
Over that period of time, this elderly man knew his time was short and as he saw his fellow Christians in a hostile world, he wanted them to live a life of spiritual success. He wanted them to have a joy that is full. And so the last thing he wrote in his letter was,
In ending on this note, John is doing something that is very characteristic of himself. He uses contrast. He enjoys comparing things. For example, light and darkness, love and hate, that which is true and that which is false. He sees our spiritual battle as between two contrasts, two opposites. And he ends on that.
So we have the contrast between the true and the false in verses 20 and 21. In other words, John found the negatives useful and he did not see the positive as the complete story. He tried to balance his teaching and his practical applications and so he generally puts his positive first and then his negative, and this is what he has done here. So we are not only told that we must keep the commandments and be perfect, we are also told that we must not sin. Here, we see the negative in relation to the one and only true and living God and that is the avoidance of idols.
This is a positive aspect of the truth. But if we want to make sure that we will be in that condition, we must keep ourselves from idols. There are constantly things in this life and world that threaten to become between us and that knowledge of God. In other words, whether we like it or not, it is a warfare and it is a fight of faith; there is a fierce enemy against us and he is aggressively active.
The primary goal of that evil one that John speaks of towards the end of his letter is to come between us and this knowledge of God. And the way he does that, of course, is to try to get us to fix our mind, our attention, and our heart on something else. So it is to warn us against the terrible danger that John ends on this note.
In a sense, the greatest threat that confronts us in our spiritual life is the devotion to and worshipping of idols—idolatry. Most people tend to think that above all we need to be warned not to do certain things. There are many warnings like that in Scripture, but never forget that before we are told what not to do, we are always told what we are to do. Take the Ten Commandments for example. They are positive and then negative. They follow the same pattern of procedure that John does.
Now, when we look at it that way, we see how practical the apostle John's advice is in I John 5, especially I John 5:21 there where it says, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."
John was writing to people who had been pagan and who were still set in a pagan society where idols had literally been made of silver and gold and wood and stone and other material things. They had not gone back to them. And that is what answers the reason why. Why did John say to a converted congregation and to a converted people, "Keep yourself from idols"? Would that not be obvious not to have an idol to bow down to or look after? Obviously, John is talking about the spirit of the law there. He is talking about the spiritual principle and it is broad, in a sense.
God is called the living God here to contrast idols which are represented as deaf, dumb, dead, and blind. Everyone in God's church knows that idolatry with carved and shaped material idols is a sin; they did back then and we do now. This shows that John's primary goal was not just to talk about the literal idols, but the spirit of that the second commandment. However, what both Paul and John warned against were things contrary to the spirit of the law: obsessions, fanaticism, misdirected passions, and false ideas.
Now, the apostle John was very concerned about idolatry sweeping into the church. The … . . .
It is a very simple statement, and it seems out of place with the rest of the context of that portion of scripture—even with his epistle.
Here, we are reminded of three important things about our relationship with the world. First, we find something about ourselves: "We know that we are of God." Second, we are told that there are certain things that are always true about the world. Third, we are to keep ourselves from idolatry. There is a progression here.
The third thing the apostle John tells us about our relationship with the world is that we are to keep ourselves from idolatry.
John does not use a large number of words to express that point; he just states it emphatically. Human beings have, characteristically, lowered themselves to the worship of idols throughout their entire history. Because of the enmity against God, mankind has sought other forms of worship. The irony of idolatry is that, quite often, idols have human features that do not function, making them subhuman rather than the intended superhuman.
I keep reading this because it is such a simple yet powerful statement that I want it to stick in our minds. John's exhortation "keep yourselves from idols" seems out of place, at first glance, compared to the rest of the epistle. Idolatry has not so much as been mentioned in the epistle. Although the warning may include a general admonition to avoid any contact with paganism, it is more likely that the warning represents a final characterization of the heresy represented by the false teachers.
The Greek word for idols here is used frequently in the literature of the period to refer to "false gods." We know that false teachers promote false gods. There is no way a man-made image, or someone who makes up one, can truthfully represent the Eternal God. Yet, false teachers arise, deceiving whomever they can deceive. The worshipping of an idol is such foolishness and promotes such a lie that one has to wonder what an idolater is thinking.
False teaching is ultimately apostasy from the true faith. To follow after it is to become nothing better than an idol worshipper, especially if it is a matter of the truth of one's conception of God. Because of the seriousness of idolatry and the commonality of the tendency toward it, in I John 5:21, John says, "keep yourselves from idols." He is blunt with his admonition because he is driving home this point.
This elderly man knew his time was short, and as he sees this group of Christians in a hostile world, he wants them to live a life of spiritual success. He wants them to have a joy that is full, and so the last thing he writes in his letter is:
Now in ending on this note John is doing something that is very characteristic of him. He uses contrast. He enjoys comparing things: light and darkness, love and hate, that which is true and that which is false. He sees our spiritual battle as between two contrasts—two opposites. He ends the letter on that.
Three times truth is mentioned there. It was very important to John, and this is what he is focusing on at the end of his life.
Then he adds, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols"—the false. This is a contrast between the true and false.
In other words, John enjoyed negatives; He did not see the positive as the complete story. So he generally puts his positive first and then his negative. This is what he does here. We are not only told that we must keep the commandments and be perfect; we are also told that we must not sin. Here we see the negative in relation to the one and only true and living God—the avoidance of idols.
Why are the first two commandments about idols? Because it is important! It is the foundation to keep God's commandments, you first have to know the true God. And, then everything follows logically thereafter.
There are no doubt many other reasons why He came... And so John gives this advice, "Keep yourself from idols." Idolatry will put a huge crack in the foundation of the truth. Any kind of idolatry will cause the superstructure to crumble. And so, he ends this way:
"Know God, the true God—that is eternal life; and keep yourselves from idols."
