Read with Me
1 John 2:20-25 (HCSB)
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. I have not written to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar, if not the one who denies that Jesus is the Messiah? This one is the antichrist: the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son can have the Father; he who confesses the Son has the Father as well.
What you have heard from the beginning must remain in you. If what you have heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He Himself made to us: eternal life.
Listen with Me
John is continuing his warnings about the antichrists who have entered the Church in the guise of believers, but who were spreading false doctrines and leading many astray.
John knew that many in the Churches would read or hear his words, but he knew that only those who were truly in the kingdom through faith in Jesus would understand them and act on his warning. Those who truly are in the kingdom have been given the Holy Spirit to live in their heart and guide their mind in the truth. These believers can heed the warning, discern where the danger lies, and distance themselves from those promulgating lies that are destructive to the soul.
The key lie that these antichrist are spreading is that Jesus is not the Christ, the Messiah who had been promised over long ages. Such false teachers and preachers were saying that Jesus was not truly God in the flesh, but that He was simply a good man, a prophet, a great teacher of divine truth, or even a great gnostic mystic who had achieved enlightenment and was sharing His insights. Today this false teaching often takes the form of “demythologizing” Jesus. Many books and documentaries claim to disclose the “Historic Jesus”, claiming to carefully remove the layers of myth in which his followers wrapped him after his crucifixion, finally revealing the “real” merely human Jesus.
Even though such researchers and theologians are claiming to be objective seekers of the truth, they completely discount the reliable eyewitness testimony of those who personally knew Jesus. And they reject Jesus’ own claims to be God in the flesh, to be one with the Father. And, as John points out, in so doing they end up denying not only the Son, making Him either a liar or sadly mistaken about His own identity, but denying the Father as well, who claimed Jesus as His divine Son more than once in the hearing of witnesses (Mark 1:11; Luke 9:35).
Far from being great scholars and teachers, as these antichrist infiltrators frequently style themselves, John warns that by denying the divinity of Jesus and His identity as the Messiah, these false teachers demonstrate that they themselves have no relationship with God at all, fully in keeping with the teaching of Jesus Himself (Luke 10:16).
So, John’s warning is summed up in verses 24 and 25. What his readers had received in the beginning, the truth of Jesus as the Messiah, the eternal Son of God, they need to hold on to, and not give in to the arguments of those trying to lead them away from the truth. By holding on to Jesus, they will maintain their hold on God the Father, and by maintaining their hold on the Father, they will maintain their hold on the eternal life that only comes through being in relationship with Him through faith in Jesus.
Pray with Me
Father, it would be nice to believe that in two thousand years we as Your people have grown beyond falling into the trap of sophisticated-sounding arguments by so-called Bible scholars claiming to have uncovered the truth about Jesus. But we have not. Far too many are still being led astray by those who bring the spirit of antichrist into our congregations, preaching a different Jesus, a mere man of flesh and blood who came to teach His brand truth, and who was tragically killed and then deified by his followers. Such teachers truly do deny Jesus and thus deny You as well, and are not worthy of being followed at all, but condemned (Galatians 1:8-9). Lord, give me and all Your people great discernment, so that we can identify these false teachers and stay far away from them, not allowing ourselves to be deceived and let astray. Amen.