Kyk ook:
(7)Daar het baie misleiers te voorskyn gekom in die wêreld. Hulle erken nie dat Jesus die Christus is wat mens geword het nie. Dit is wat ek met “die misleier”, “die antichris”, bedoel.
(9)Elkeen wat nie by die leer oor Christus bly nie, maar daaraan verander, erken God nie. Wie in dié leer bly, erken sowel die Vader as die Seun. (10)As daar iemand na julle toe kom wat ’n ander leer bring, moet julle hom nie in julle huise ontvang nie en hom selfs nie groet nie, (11)want wie hom groet, is saam skuldig aan die kwaad wat hy doen.
2 Johannes 1:10-11 is een van die gedeeltes in die Bybel wat gebruik word om te sê dat jy jou van dwaalleraars moet onttrek en skeur eerder as om saam in een kerk te wees. Dit word gebruik tesame met 1 Korintiërs 5:11, 1 Korintiërs 15:33, 2 Korintiërs 6:14,17, Efesiërs 5:7, 1 Timoteus 6:5 en 2 Timoteus 3:5.
Of ’n mens hierdie gedeelte as eksakte opdrag moet sien kan ’n mens oor debateer, maar dit kan vergelyk word met die volgende scenario:
Veronderstel jy het ’n vriend wat saam met jou vrou werk en hierdie vriend behandel jou vrou nie billik nie. Jou vrou kom soms by die huis en vertel met trane in haar oë hoe hierdie vriend haar lewe by die werk onmoontlik maak.
As jy sou redeneer dat hierdie iets is tussen jou vriend en jou vrou en dat jy nie gaan inmeng nie en jy sou voortgaan om ’n vriendskap met hierdie persoon te hê, sal dit jou verhouding met jou vrou baie ernstig benadeel.
Die regte ding sou wees om jou vriend hiermee te konfronteer. Indien jou vriend se houding teenoor jou vrou dan nie verander nie, sal julle vriendskap nie kan voortgaan nie.
CH Dodd se kommentaar oor hierdie gedeelte
John now introduces his second warning. So serious is the consequence of the deceivers’ error (causing its adherents to lose the Father as well as the Son) that he not only exhorts them to take heed to themselves but instructs them how to treat a false prophet who having ‘gone out into the world’ (7, RSV) now ‘comes to you’ (10, RSV). Their duty is clear and definite: receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed. ‘That is, neither welcome him when he comes, nor ‘give him any greeting’ (RSV) when he goes. This uncompromising order to Christians who are normally to be ‘given to hospitality’ (e.g. Rom. xii. 13; 1 Tim. iii. 2, v. 3-10; Tit. i. 8; Heb. xiii. 2; 1 Pet. iv. 8-10), and who are generously to entertain true missionaries (3 Jn. 5-8), has proved unacceptable to many, CH Dodd suggests that these are ‘emergency regulations’ relating to ‘a situation of extreme danger to the Church’, but that ‘this fierce intolerance’ was neither necessary nor right. He therefore declines ‘to accept the Presbyter’s ruling here as a sufficient guide to Christian conduct’ and declares it ‘incompatible with the general purport of the teaching of the New Testament and not really consistent with the teaching of these epistles themselves’, But are we to suppose that John was divided against himself? This instruction is given by the apostle of love immediately following an exhortation to love (6). Did John first insist on the commandment of love and then immediately break it himself? Besides, we are not ‘at liberty to set aside direct ethical injunctions of the Lord’s Apostles in this manner’ (Alford).
This verse is relevant both to compromisers who refuse to withdraw from anyone and to separatists who like to withdraw from almost everybody. For a balanced interpretation of it, the following three facts need to be borne in mind.
First. John is referring to teachers of false doctrine, not merely to believers in it. The person who is not to be received is one who ‘comes to you’, not as a casual visitor but as an official teacher, and who is said not just to believe, but to bring, teaching other than this doctrine (of Christ), as a merchant ‘brings’ with him wares for sale. Christians may surely welcome and entertain someone who holds false views, and will seek to bring him to a better mind. It is those who are engaged in the systematic dissemination of lies, dedicated missionaries of error, to whom we may give no encouragement. CH Dodd does not seem to appreciate this difference. Although he writes of ‘missionaries’, he seems to be thinking of individual heretics. We must ‘find a way’, he writes, ‘of living with those whose convictions differ from our own upon the most fundamental matters’. But of course! In the case of a private individual who denies Jesus Christ, it is enough to look to ourselves (8) lest we embrace his error, and to seek to win, him to the truth; but in the case of someone officially commissioned to teach his error to others, we must reject not only it but him.
Second, John’s instruction may well relate not only to an ‘official’ visit of false teachers but to the extending to them of an ‘official’ welcome, rather than merely private hospitality. Two details suggest this. First, this letter was addressed, as we have seen, to a church, not to an individual, and the phrase if there come any unto you (plural, humas) describes the anticipated visit of a false teacher (or a group of them, verse 7) to the church in question. They had left the church where John was (cf. verse 7 exélthon with 1 Jn. ii. 19 exélthan), but they had evidently not yet arrived where the recipients of the Second Epistle were. ‘A widespread movement of heretical propaganda is afoot, and may at any time reach their city’ (Dodd). The second detail is John’s order not to receive him . . . into your house, which is literally ‘into the house’ (rsv). Which house? Of course he may mean that every Christian house was to be closed to the false prophets. But may it not be that John was primarily referring to ‘the house’ (in days before church buildings existed) in which the church met for worship (cf. Rom. xvi. 5; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Col. iv. 15; Phm. 2)? Perhaps, therefore, it is not private hospitality which John is forbidding so much as an official welcome into the congregation, with the opportunity this would afford to the false teacher to propagate his errors. ‘He is to be treated as excommunicate’ (Dodd).
In the third place, John is referring to teachers of false doctrine about the incarnation, and not to every false teacher. This verse gives us no warrant to refuse fellowship to those, even teachers, who do not agree with our interpretation of apostolic doctrine in every particular. It is inaccurate to write about ostracizing ‘people whose opinions we dislike’ (Dodd). It is the entertainment of antichrist which is forbidden us, the arch-deceiver who in his teaching denies the essential deity and humanity of Jesus. If John’s instruction still seems harsh, it is perhaps because his concern for the glory of the Son and the good of men’s souls is greater than ours, and because ‘the tolerance’ on which we pride ourselves’ is in reality an ‘indifference to truth’ (Alexander). The false teacher whom John will not have entertained by the church, is ‘the deceiver’ and ‘the antichrist’ (7). His teaching is derogatory to Christ and dangerous to men. How then can we make him welcome in our home or church or wish him well on his journey ? If we do so in the name of love, are we sure we are acting in the best interests of the false teachers, and of those they would pervert? ‘Charity has its limits: it must not be shewn to one man in such a way as to do grievous harm to others’ (Plummer).
11. The reason for John’s instruction is now given. False teaching which denies Christ and so robs men of the Father is not just an unfortunate error; it is a ‘wicked work’ (RSV; ponérois, evil, ‘wicked’, comes last in the sentence for emphasis). It may send souls to eternal ruin. If, then, we do not wish to further such wicked work (to become ‘an accomplice in his wicked deeds’, NEB), we must give no encouragement to the worker.