The culture that the Roman Empire adopted and into which the early church was born was Greek. The Greek philosopher Plato had imbued into Greek thought a low view of physicality: to be physical is to be imperfect, even corrupted. Perfection, Plato taught, lies in the purely spiritual and intellectual realm. The idea that God would become flesh in Jesus Christ was therefore absurd and untenable to many educated people in the first century. By the time John wrote this letter, the Christian church was in its second generation. There were many who liked what they saw of the Christian witness but wanted a faith that made sense. The apostles preached a Jesus who was both fully God and fully man. The ‘docetists’ (as they came to be known) believed that Jesus was God but could not, therefore, accept that he was really human with a real physical body, only one that seemed so. The problem with this theology for John was not only the fact that it was untrue but that it arose out of a wayward human agenda. They were insisting that they should be able to comprehend the things of God. It was not just the teaching of these people that was wrong, therefore, but the whole spirit of what they were trying to achieve. By faith we must hold on to many things that will never make sense to the human mind. You will have to get used to that if you want to live with God. Beware of the need to always understand everything about God and his ways. We can apprehend God, but we cannot comprehend him.
Are there things that are happening now that you struggle to understand? Entrust these things to God.
Read 1 John 4:1-6
