They went out from us, but they didn't belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have continued with us. But they left, that they might be revealed that none of them belong to us.
". . . it is possible, in this instance, that those who later allowed their heretical thought and actions to run away with them (when it could obviously be said, ouk esan ex emon, ’they were not of us’) were in the first place believers with a genuine, if uninformed, faith in Jesus." [Note: Ibid., p. 103. Cf. Hodges, The Epistles . . ., pp. 109-10.] 