Here I would like to point out that when we speak of these matters, we are not fighting for doctrines. However, we are fighting for the genuine experience of Christ so that Christians may enjoy Christ in order to grow in life.
Not many today teach concerning Christian growth in the proper way. What is emphasized among Christians is growth in knowledge. But the New Testament teaches us that we need to grow in life. As newborn babes, we should desire to drink the milk of the Word so that we may grow in life (1 Pet. 2:2).
From experience we know that to grow in life is to grow by the ingredients of what the Lord is as our nourishment. We need to take this nourishment into our being as food and then assimilate it. The Lord Jesus told us definitely that He is our food. In John 6:35 He said, “I am the bread of life.” For the Lord to be bread to us means that He is our food. In John 6:57 the Lord Jesus said that he who eats Him will live because of Him. The food by which we live is also the food by which we grow. If we do not grow by the food we eat, how can we live by it? Children grow by what they eat. Then they live by it. Hence, when the Lord Jesus said that he who eats Him will also live by Him, this implies both living by Him and growing by Him.
In the Lord’s recovery we are wholly for the experience of the growth in life. This growth in life depends on our enjoyment of the Lord Jesus in a subjective way. If the Lord were not the Spirit, He could not be subjective to us, and He could not be our life. If the Lord could not be our life, then He could not be our nourishment.
Many Christians today emphasize objective teachings concerning the improvement of character and behavior. These teachings are ethical and are comparable to the teachings of Confucius. The teachings in the New Testament, however, are different. The New Testament teaches that after being processed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, the Triune God becomes the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit in order to enter into our being to be our life and also our life supply so that we may live and grow by Him. This is the central line of the New Testament revelation.
The Lord Jesus declared that He is life. In John 14:6 He said, “I am...the life.” If He were only on the throne in the heavens, how could He be our life? This would be impossible. In order for Christ to be our life, He must be the Spirit living within us. It is crucial that Christians experience Christ as their subjective life. We are fighting not for doctrines, but for the Christian experience of Christ as life.
We have pointed out that, according to verses 21 and 22, the truth is that Jesus is the Christ. However, this truth was denied by certain heretics who said that Jesus was not the Christ. Denying that Jesus is the Christ is the heresy of Cerinthus, a first century Syrian heresiarch of Jewish descent, educated at Alexandria. His heresy was a mixture of Judaism, Gnosticism, and Christianity. He distinguished the maker (creator) of the world from God, and represented that maker as a subordinate power. He taught adoptionist Christology (Adoptionism), saying that Jesus became Son of God by exaltation to a status that was not His by birth, thus denying the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. In his heresy he separated the earthly man Jesus, regarded as the son of Joseph and Mary, from the heavenly Christ, and taught that after Jesus was baptized, Christ as a dove descended upon Him. Then He announced the unknown Father and did miracles, but at the end of His ministry Christ departed from Jesus, and Jesus suffered death on the cross and rose from the dead, while Christ remained separated as a spiritual being, and will rejoin the man Jesus at the coming of the Messianic kingdom of glory. This heresy denied that Jesus is the Christ. According to John’s word, anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ is the antichrist. Cerinthus was an antichrist, and his followers also were antichrists.
In verse 22 John says that the antichrist denies the Father and the Son. To confess that Jesus is the Christ is to confess that He is the Son of God (Matt. 16:16; John 20:31). Hence, to deny that Jesus is the Christ is to deny the Father and the Son. Whoever so denies the divine Person of Christ is an antichrist.