Remain

Always be ready

John’s focus is that it has always been the last hour since Jesus brought victory of sin and death and ascended to the Father. For we know that He could return at any moment.

How do we know at any moment it could be the last hour? Well oftentimes people like to say “this is a sign of the end times!” As if because a certain event that is happening in the world proves the closeness of Jesus’ return. But what John says that we have seen many antichrists come throughout our lifetime. John says many have already come and he is within the first 100 years of the church. So we have certainly have had some that looked like an “antichrist” within our lifetime. That’s because only God the Father knows the day and the hour. Satan doesn’t know! That means he is always preparing a new antichrist, maybe even several at the same time, until that day comes.

So what is an antichrist? It is someone who teaches something heretical to the Gospel and seeks to deceive others with false views and lead them away from Jesus.

The thing about an antichrist is that they don’t try and deceive you with beliefs that seem unreasonable or ridiculous to you. They deceive you with things that align with what you personally want to believe and hold on to. What he is trying to warn them about is not to “identify” a antichrist figure but to be concerned with things and people that create division. To be aware of bad teaching and to expose it in the light.

Those John was warning about were those who separated Jesus from God.

But for some of these people it was easier just to leave then to deal with the truth. What John says, then, is that they were never believers to begin with because they didn’t accept fully the testimony of Jesus. They never had devotional, just interest. And when things got hard they left. Because when things get hard is when you learn how truly committed you are to something. Do you go and run off? Do you quit? Or do you face the challenge head on. But the thing is, if someone is going to leave because it gets hard you don’t want them there to begin with.

When I was in high school I played basketball and we had some crazy workouts. If someone wasn’t willing to put in the work and they quit you don’t want to force them to stay because they are never going to be fully engaged with the team.

See, when you are “under the lights” you find out who will persevere. Will you deny the Son of God, Jesus, or will you stay faithful to Him? But even more then that, will you be prepared to stand up for the truth?

Then John shows how these people were in the midst of those trying to deceive them. But he tells them that they “know all things” through Christ. They have the tools necessary to protect against these false teachings and to remain in the truth.

These antichrists were denying Jesus as Lord and in so doing denying the Father who sent Him. We don’t know exactly what the issue was but we could think of something like “I believe that Jesus was a really great teacher who we should follow but I don’t believe that He died and rose again”. Or “I believe that Jesus is one of many great teachers that we should follow”. There are those who also believe that there is only one person in God, no Father, Son, and Spirit. Whatever it was, they denied the incarnation. No one can deny that Jesus is God and deny His actions on earth and also be a believer.

We need to be on guard because anything that contradicts the Word of God we should not listen to.

This is why John makes sure they know that they are to remain! To remain means that even when things are coming against you that you stay committed.

He also reminds them of the fundamental truth. That if Jesus did come and bring us eternal life then we don’t need anything else. I think learning about how God created the universe, about the ways God uses science, about philosophical evidences of God existences are all good. There is always one thing that you don’t need anyone else to teach you, that Jesus died and rose from the dead. If we believe that then everything else opposed to that is a lie.

Here is a hint: if the church hasn’t believed something for most of its existence then we should probably throw it off as false.

When someone tells you something that seems against God, that you know what conflicts what you believe about Jesus, then you default to Jesus every single time. If your default in your brain is to trust the world over Jesus then you need to reconsider what you believe.

Rest in the truth

But we also have something positive that He tells us. “If you know that He is righteous you also know that if we seek to obey His commands we are born again”.

He tells them. Do you believe in Jesus? Do you seek to live for Him? Then have confidence in your salvation. Don’t try seeking it somewhere else. Don’t try to hold one truth in one hand and another truth in another. Don’t try to enjoy worldly truths while also holding godly truth. Just hold onto Jesus.

There is beauty in following Jesus in this way because it means we aren’t always trying to search for what is right and wrong but that we have right in front of us what we need to believe. You don’t have to search for a standard of right and wrong, you already have one.