"Here Calvin is quite incisive. He writes, 'I readily agree
with the ancients, who thought that Cerinthus and Carpocrates are
here referred to. But the denial of Christ extends much further; for it
is not enough to confess in one word that Jesus is the Christ, but he
must be acknowledged to be such as the Father offers him to us in
the Gospel….' Calvin then adds, 'We now see that Christ is denied
whenever the things that belong to him are taken from him. And as
Christ is the end of the Law and the Gospel and has within himself all
the treasures of wisdom and understanding, so also is he the mark at
which all heretics aim and direct their arrows. Therefore, the apostle
has good reason to make those who fight against Christ the leading
liars, since the full truth is exhibited to us in him.' According to
Calvin, to confess that Jesus is the Christ is to confess the Christ of
the Scriptures. To deny that Christ, by whatever means, is the heresy.
Moreover, it is a heresy with terrible consequences, as one might
expect. First, says John, to deny the Son is to deny the Father. No
doubt, the false teachers would have pretended to be worshiping the
same God as the Christians. 'We only differ from you in your views
about Jesus,' they might have said. But John says that this is
impossible and quite obviously so, for if Jesus is God, then to deny
Jesus as God is to deny God. Moreover, it is also to forfeit the
presence of God in one's life or, as we could also say, to have no part
of him or he of us. John uses the phrase 'has the Father.' In biblical
language this is the equivalent of saying that the one who will not
confess Jesus as the Christ remains unregenerate and therefore unde |
