Please read the passage above before reading the commentary below.
In its earlier days, John’s faith community had suffered pressure or persecution from outside itself. Later the pressure came from within the group. It seems that some members were not accepting the position of the Father and Jesus in the work of salvation. By separating the Father and Jesus, they were setting up anti-Christ because we cannot have the Christ except when we have his Father.
God, however, commands us to accept Jesus as God’s Son and to love one another. The proof that we are keep the commandment is that we have God’s Holy Spirit.
How can we tell if we have the Spirit? God’s Spirit acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Any Spirit that refuses to accept that Jesus is the Christ cannot have come from God. Some people think that human flesh, our earthy life, is evil and that the Spirit of God would never have entered human history as a human being. Some may have had other reasons for separating Jesus from the Father. It matters because made all of creation, including human life, good. It matters because God did take on our human nature in Christ.
To accept Jesus as Son of God is to accept the fact that all creation is inherently good, even though dependent on God. To refuse to accept the goodness of God’s creation of human life, is to say that God would never allow the Son of God to become human. The truth is, however, that human nature is good, and that God did take on human nature in its entirety in Jesus Christ.
We, in our community may not have pressure from outside our group, but we still have to wrestle with faith within our group. I remember an old comic strip from the 1950’s, 60’s and 70s, Pogo. He summed up the problem of his day by saying, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Our faith in Christ and the Father must support the faith of our community, and the community must support our faith. We must live by the Spirit of God, recognizing ourselves as sharing the same human nature as Christ and the same divine nature as the Father. In this we know that we have the Spirit of God and that we belong to God.