Polycarp is said to have been the Bishop of Smyrna and to have been conversant with John, the apostle of the Lord. He is also said to have been martyred by being burned alive at the age of eighty-seven. This epistle is believed by some to be from near the middle of the second century, A.D.
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Polycarp’s Statement:
Polycarp misunderstands 1John 4:3 and, consequently, misquotes it. He writes, “For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is antichrist” (VII).
The Truth:
Polycarp made the mistake of assuming that John was speaking of people who deny that Jesus actually lived in a natural, fleshly body while on earth, and he altered John’s words to fit the message which he thought John meant to convey. Polycarp was wrong, and the difference between what John wrote and what Polycarp said is critical.
What John actually wrote was this: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”
John was not saying that every person who confesses that Jesus lived in a body of flesh is of God. If that were true, then false teachers could hardly exist among the saints, for almost all false teachers say that Jesus lived in the flesh.
The apostle John knew better than to think that anyone is of God who said Jesus lived in a fleshly, human body. John was referring instead to the vocal testimony of the Spirit that is always heard when Christ enters into an earthly temple (cp. Jn. 3:8). The first example of this is what John himself experienced on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-4.
So, in 1John 4:3, the verse misquoted by Polycarp, John was warning the saints not to think the Spirit comes any other way than the way it first came. He was warning them to avoid any spirit which does not testify (“confess Christ”) when it enters a person, and it is clear that he was referring to speaking in tongues at the moment of Spirit baptism, as at Pentecost.
Ironically, Polycarp immediately proceeds from his misquote of John’s words to condemn anyone who would “pervert the oracles of the Lord”, adding an exhortation for believers to “return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning” (VII). Polycarp could have provided a good example for believers by following his own advice and correctly quoting John, thus preserving the original meaning of the apostle’s words.
Polycarp’s Statement:
Polycarp teaches that salvation will be received only at the end of a life of faithful service to God. We will be raised from the dead into eternal glory only “if we do [God’s] will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness. . .” (II). “If we please Him in this present world, we shall receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, we shall also reign together with Him” (V). In reference to a man whom Polycarp considers to be apostate, he states that such a believer who departs from the faith and is again defiled by covetousness and idolatry “shall be judged as one of the heathen” (XI).
The Truth:
This is true.
Polycarp here is teaching the same thing that the prophets of Israel, Jesus, and the apostles all taught; that is, only those who do the will of God will be saved in the end. There is no hint in Polycarp’s writings of the doctrine of many modern evangelical Christians – that is, that they are already saved and that their future salvation is assured even if they live contrary to the will of God.
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Polycarp’s Statement:
Polycarp quotes from the apocryphal book of Tobit, using it as an authoritative source of divine truth (X).
The Truth:
In the book of Tobit, the righteous man Tobit is blinded by bird droppings which fell on his eyes while he slept by a wall, causing him to develop cataracts. Later, Raphael, an angel from heaven, tells Tobit’s son, Tobiah, what will heal Tobit’s eyes. He says, “As for the gall [of the fish Tobiah had caught], if you rub it on the eyes of a man who has cataracts, blowing into his eyes right on the cataracts, his sight will be restored” (Tobit 6:9).
Sarah, the young woman whom Tobiah will marry, had already been married seven times, according to this tale, but a “wicked demon” named Asmodeus killed each of her husbands on the hapless bride’s wedding night, before the marriages could be consummated (Tobit 3:7-9). Raphael instructs Tobiah how to use other parts of the dead fish to exorcise the demon from the young woman’s bedroom. “As regards the fish’s heart and liver, if you burn them so that the smoke surrounds a man or a woman who is afflicted by a demon or evil spirit, the affliction will leave him completely, and no demons will return to him again” (Tobit 6:8). After the wedding, Tobiah remembered the angel’s instructions when he entered the bridal chamber. He “took the fish’s liver and heart from the bag which he had with him, and placed them on the embers [to make] incense. The demon, repelled by the odor of the fish, fled into Upper Egypt. Raphael pursued him there and bound him hand and foot” (Tobit 8:2-3).
The fish used in these magical spells was one which Tobiah caught while on his journey from Nineveh to Media. He had stopped to wash his feet in a river when “a large fish suddenly leaped out of the water and tried to swallow his foot.” The surprised young man, at the angel’s command, “seized the fish and hauled it up on the shore” (Tobit 6:3-4).
The superstitious nature of these passages is obvious. No true man of God would ever have trusted such a document.
Polycarp’s Statement:
Polycarp mentions “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself” (XII). According to Polycarp, the Father raised up the Son from the dead (II), and the reader is exhorted to “believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father who ‘raised Him from the dead’” (XII).
There is nothing false here. Polycarp says nothing in his epistle that could be used in support of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Note:
The word “Christian” is not found in Polycarp’s epistle.