1/18/26- Going Too Far
I think a lot sometimes about the concept of “too far” in the Christian/Messianic faith. It’s a confusing, concerning subject, and one that not enough people are really willing to take an honest approach to considering, and even fewer people seem to be willing to honestly evaluate themselves against the conclusions scripture points to. I think the core of this issue largely comes down to a lack of understanding or an unwillingness to accept the fundamental simplicity and strength of the Gospel. The simplicity of the Gospel is at the same time key to its ease of reception to some and its immensely confounding power to others. The weak and destitute, the desperate and needy will cling to it like a life preserver, while the strong and wealthy, confident and well-supplied will let it pass them by or slip gradually between their fingers. Some people, irreverently, call it a crutch, and I personally think that these people have no idea what they're talking about. Yes, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a support on which a believer may and should readily and gladly rely, but to refer to it and Him as a crutch derogatorily is to belittle someone for being aware of their neediness towards God and acting on it. If the Gospel and the accompanying faith and relationship with Christ are indeed a crutch, then they are one that everyone in the world has need of, because we have all fallen short of the glory of God and need to be held up by His goodness if we are to stand at all. Romans, Jude, and Psalms, among other books, all speak of those who will and will not stand in the judgement of God, and it sounds an awful lot to me like those who stand are exclusively those who rely on the “crutch” of a faith whose core is Christ and Christ crucified. 2 John gives a stern judgement against those who “got too far,” saying “Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.” (2 John 1:9) The phrase “goes to far” here is not a single, arbitrarily determined sin, but is instead (much like the warnings in Hebrews 6, 10, and 12) referring to a specific style of sin that is corrosive to the faith and detrimental to the soul. In Greek, the phrase “goes to far,’ proago, has multiple meanings, with the one in view here meaning:
“To go before;
Preceding, prior in time, previous;
To proceed, go forward;
In a bad sense, to go further than is right or proper” (BLB Strong’s G4254)
The Apostle John is warning against those who have gone forward- or gotten ahead- moving past the plain teaching of scripture and the foundation of the Gospel and moved on towards peculiar things. (This does not mean that there is not supposed to be any depth to our understanding of scripture or God; Hebrews 6:1 says “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God…,” which tells us that we are expected to develop a deeper relationship and understanding, and this so that we do not fall away, as the chapter chillingly goes on to describe.) The New Testament and early church history are riddled with examples of these “too far” doctrines and their disastrous consequences: Revelation has a few, (Pergamum and Thyatira, in chapter 2) and Paul writes to or about several individuals that fit these criteria (the letter to the Galatians as well his explicit mentions of Alexander and Hymenaeus in 1 Timothy, not to mention the doctrinal liberties he denounces in 1 Timothy 4.) Paul also writes elsewhere, in 1 Corinthians 8:1, that "knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies;” I grant that in the specific passage this is pulled from he is discussing the dietary habits of the Corinthians, but I think this principal can easily be expanded to other areas of doctrine as well. We can, through knowledge (real or perceived) become arrogant in our conduct and attitudes, trading in a softened heart towards God for one that is hardened (or strengthened) towards its own selfish wants. Knowledge is not inherently bad, but we humans have a natural proclivity to use it as justification for ourselves. Many of the sins I have committed, great and small, have stemmed from my own weakness towards temptation and my own superfluous sense of goodness via my knowledge and understanding of scripture. I, like many people, got it into my head that “I’m not that bad because of XYZ,” and thought- in practice if not internally- that God would just make allowances for me in areas that I wasn’t even resisting sin. Stemming from this, my already shaky doctrinal understandings began to warp, bit by bit, to create a God and a faith that allowed me to have far greater freedoms than any child of God should ever have or want. Coming back from this is definitely possible- I believe that anyone can be called back from any point if He wills it, for it is to His glory when such things happen- but possibility does not always equal actuality. We are responsible, like Jude says, for keeping ourselves in the love of God, and one of the ways we do that is by maintaining sound doctrine rooted firmly in the clear teaching of scripture, not choosing the path of least resistance or the one that jives the most naturally with us. Jesus says, in Luke 13:24, that we are to “strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” We should take care that in this life we strive against our sin and not against God, lest we begin to wander off “too far ahead” of the simple, foundational truths of God and find ourselves shut out of the narrow door.
