Verse 19
19. St. John now proceeds to declare that these Nicolaitans, or Gnostics, were not so much apostates as original heretics, at heart discordant with the Church from the very first. So Simon Magus, an original juggler and false doctrinary, entered the Christian body without ever being a Christian; and though he went out formally from the Christian body, he did not apostatize from Christ, for he was never a Christian.
They The antichrists.
Went out from us They made open exodus from the Christian body.
Not of us Not of the true body of Christ in doctrine or heart. They were Maguses, who inserted themselves in the Church, yet holding Christ to be a phantasm.
If they had been If they had truly known and loved Christ.
Have continued with us The cause of their secession could not then have existed. Loving God and loving the brethren, they would have loved the communion of the Church, and rejoiced to remain in the Christian body.
But Their exodus was no loss to the Church, but a good providence.
That It was graciously designed.
Manifest Their exposure would relieve the Church of all responsibility for their false doctrines and unbecoming lives.
They were not all of us Truer rendering, that not all (among us) are (truly) of us. It becomes a clear case that there are some among us for whose principles and conduct the true gospel is irresponsible. Alford, following Dusterdieck, has an elaborate dissertation on the passage, as if it had some bearing on the question of the necessary final perseverance of all true believers. He writes as if the apostle assumed a universal law in the kingdom of God, that a man once converted always continues a saved man. But St. John’s word continued refers not to continuing a Christian, but to the remaining in the Church if you are a Christian. It does not say, or assume, that all Christians will forever stay Christians; but that it may be assumed, when we know nothing to the contrary, that these men would have remained in the Church if they had been, and as long as they were, Christians. Why not?
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