“Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” Amos 3:3.
This is a basic truth of life. Can a marriage last, if the two cannot agree in the way they are going, in their aim in life? Will two business partners remain together long, if they cannot agree in which direction the business should go? Could Israel remain pleasing to God, if they did not follow Him?
Enoch was a man who lived in the early days of the earth, being born about 600 years after Adam was created. Not much is said about him, but what is said tells us completely about the man,
“Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him,” Genesis 5:21-24.
Enoch was a man who walked with God. What does this mean? Where God went, so Enoch followed. Enoch followed God with his whole heart, not turning aside “to the right hand or to the left.”
After saying that Enoch walked with God, it says, “and he was not, for God took him.” Hebrews 11:5-6 gives us the explanation of what is meant by this, “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him’; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” Now the Scripture says, “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,” Heb 9:27, but Enoch was spared this, because “he pleased God.”
God desires for us that we should walk with Him. But we cannot walk with Him, if we are not in agreement with Him.
John writes, “Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son,” 2 John 9 (RSV). This carries the figure of walking with God to what occurs when we don’t remain walking with Him, but instead run on ahead; we no longer have God.
The Greek word here translated as “who goes ahead”, Bauer defines as, “Go before, lead the way, precede…As a symbol…anyone who goes too far and does not remain in the teaching.”[1] The figure presented to us is of the man who is no longer content to walk along with God, but who instead runs on ahead on his own.
In contrast, the word translated as “abide”, Thayer defines this way, “equivalent to to persevere; of him who cleaves, holds fast, to a thing.”[2] So the one “who goes ahead” and “does not abide”, is the one who is no longer content to cleave and hold fast to the doctrine of Christ, but who instead runs ahead into things not taught in the New Testament. And of this man, God could not be more plain in His assessment; he “does not have God.”
All references NKJV except where noted.
[1] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 702, translated by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, revised and augmented by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker.
[2] Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon Of The New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995), p. 399. This edition was prepared using the fourth edition published by T. and T. Clark in 1901.