Knowing the Truth

1 John 2:21-23 ESV

21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Something that has been taking place probably from the conception of currency is the passing of counterfeit money. Now, unless someone was just awful at making counterfeits, they could probably pass a counterfeit bill off to someone like me and I wouldn’t even realize that it was phony. But if you tried to give me something that looked like monopoly money, then even I could detect it.

That’s why detecting counterfeit money isn’t left to people like me who have no idea how to detect a counterfeit bill, but rather, it’s left to those who get paid to detect such phony currency.

For example, many bank tellers and cashiers have been trained to detect counterfeit bills. And the way that they can detect counterfeits is not by studying counterfeit bills, but by studying legitimate bills. In fact, they say that such people, with much experience can know legitimate currency so well that they can tell whether or not a bill is counterfeit just by the way that it feels in his or her hand.

And how do they know that it is counterfeit? Not because they know counterfeit money so well, but because they know legitimate money so well. So much so that they can immediately detect illegitimate money when they handle it.

As we continue our series of sermons this morning from the second chapter of John’s first epistle, we are going to be looking at something very similar to a cashier or a bank teller being able to detect counterfeit money because of how familiar they are with legitimate money.

In our introduction to this series of messages in our sermon from last week, we had stated the issues that were taking place around the time that John had written this epistle, the different heresies that were circulating and believed by many. Because of this, there were many in the churches that John wrote to who had seen a significant decrease in membership as many people were leaving the church after embracing what was false.

But as John said, the reason why these left was because they were never really believers to begin with. They left the fellowship of the faithful so that they may join the faithless, showing that they had always been faithless.

They weren’t like the cashiers and the bank tellers; when the counterfeit was presented to them, they didn’t know that it was counterfeit, because they never truly knew the real thing. Had they known the real thing, they would have recognized heresy as heresy.

Today, as we continue working through this series of sermons, what we see is John really making a distinction between the counterfeit and the legitimate. That is, he spells out the counterfeit gospel and the legitimate gospel, and counterfeit Christians and legitimate Christians, and how legitimate Christians can spot a counterfeit gospel.

Let’s begin by looking at verse twenty-one, which reads:

1 John 2:21 ESV

21 I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

So, again, already we see how the illustration of cashiers and bank tellers detecting counterfeit currency applies here. Just as tellers and cashiers can detect what is false by knowing what is legitimate, so does John tell his readers, “I write you, not because you do not know the truth”.

As we said last week, the main opponents of the orthodox faith in those days were those who called themselves “Gnostics”. As we said, the Greek word “gnosis” means “knowledge” thus, to be a Gnostic means to possess knowledge, to be someone who is knowledgeable.

And what the Gnostics claimed to have knowledge of was secret. In fact, they claimed to possess a knowledge that was so secret that God didn’t even give it to His own apostles. Their teaching was contrary to the teaching of the authoritative teaching of the apostles and so, they simply said that God had revealed to them things that He did not reveal to the apostles and so, they were the ones who were actually authoritative.

But though they possess such “secret knowledge” they tell those who they preach to that they would be willing to share this “secret knowledge” with them if they would join their ranks. And so, for those who weren’t truly believers in the church, this appealed to them. They thought, “well these guys will lead us into truth that God never revealed even to the apostles” as if God had revealed something extra to them that He had revealed to no one else.

Well, contrary to the message that was being spread by the Gnostics, John tells the recipients of his letter that he doesn’t write this letter because they don’t know the truth, but rather, he says that he writes to them because they already know the truth.

He says, “I don’t write you because you don’t know the full story and I have to fill you in” no; he says, “You already know what is true, and so I write to you so that I may reassure you of what you already know is true”.

John tells them that there is nothing to be taken away from what they have already been told. It’s not like John said, “When the gospel was shared with you, we said this in particular, but after thinking about it more, we decided that that wasn’t right, so just disregard that part that we told you.”

He tells them that there is nothing to be added to what they have already been told. Again, it’s not like John was saying, “Oh yeah, and when we preached the gospel to you, we left something that was vitally important out of it, so here, we need to fill you in now”.

And so, he says, “You already know what you need to know. The gospel that was brought to you is the true gospel, and anything other than that just isn’t true”. And so, again, John writes to them not to take away from or add to what they already know, but to confirm them in it.

Furthermore, John says that he writes them “because no lie is of the truth”. Now, this probably sounds like a strange and obvious statement as lying naturally belongs to the realm of what is false, but these Gnostic teachers had introduced a lie to the believers that John was writing to. That lie was concerning the denial of both the full Godhood and the full humanity of Christ.

This was a lie, it had been told that it was a lie by those who first preached the gospel to them, as these had only relayed what was true. But though that was the case, these Gnostic teachers who had been in their midst and who had persuaded a great many among them to join their ranks had presented this lie as the truth as they denied the doctrines espoused by Christ’s apostles.

And, so again, John does not write to his readers to teach them something new, but instead, he writes to them to remind them of the contents of the gospel so that they will see the obvious lie that the Gnostics were promoting as the truth and thus, be strengthened in their own commitment to the truth.

He didn’t say “these are the things that you need to look out for”, he just said, “You know the truth and if something doesn’t square up with the truth, then you know that it is a lie, which obviously is not true”.

We continue now to verses twenty-two and the first half of verse twenty-three, which reads:

1 John 2:22-23a ESV

22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23a No one who denies the Son has the Father.

Those who had taught this false theology and those who had left the fellowship of believers were spouting off that Jesus is not the Christ. John saying that these had in fact denied that Jesus is the Christ is synonymous with the fact that they had denied the full divinity and the full humanity of Jesus. And in doing this, they fully denied Who Jesus is and thus did in fact deny that Jesus is the Christ.

Now, in this, we need to recognize some contemporary religions that hold a pretty favorable view of Jesus but like the Gnostics, deny that He is Who He truly is.

For example, Muslims believe that Jesus performed many astonishing miracles. They also believe that He will return to earth at the Judgment Day. Everything about that checks out so far. But they believe that He was a mere human prophet, a very honorable prophet, but just a prophet.

Hindus believe that Jesus was a great Teacher, a revered holy Man, and a great spiritual Guide. But they also believe that all major religions are legitimate and that they all will get you to heaven. And plus, they deny the divinity of Jesus.

Some Buddhists believe that Jesus was an enlightened Man, an exceptionally good Person Who had achieved great wisdom and had reached a state of nirvana. But they deny that He is Who He said He is.

So, these groups all say really nice things about Jesus, but what does John say about such people? He says that they are all antichrists. They are all anti-Jesus. Now, you might think “How are they anti-Jesus when they all say and believe really nice things about Jesus?” They are anti-Jesus because they claim that Jesus is Who He is not.

Imagine having a very high view of the president, but for whatever reason, you think that I am the president. Well, your high view of the president doesn’t mean much then because you are associating the president with someone who is not the president.

And if someone says that they have a very high view of God, but then misidentifies Who God is, if they say that God is someone or something He is not, then they obviously are anti-God. They’re “high view” of God, it turns out, isn’t very high after all.

And so, John says that unbeknownst to those who deny that Jesus is Who He is, they don’t just deny an honorable prophet or a very enlightened teacher, they deny God Himself!

In John’s gospel, in chapter ten and verse thirty, Jesus very plainly says “I and the Father are one”. You can’t get any more straightforward than that! And so, if you deny that the Son is Who He really is, then you deny not only Him, but also God the Father and even God the Spirit Who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Very plainly, if you deny one Person in the Triune Godhead, you deny God entirely.

So, if denying One Person in the Godhead results in the entire rejection of the entire Godhead, then logically, the opposite is true for those who embrace the entire Godhead. This is made evident as John plainly says to conclude our text for today:

1 John 2:23b ESV

23b Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

If you embrace the entire Godhead, if you embrace orthodox truth and hold to it, then you are entirely embraced by the entire Godhead that you entirely embrace.

This is plain, straightforward truth. And where we find this truth is in the pages of the Bible. And the “secret knowledge”, the “secret truth” that the Gnostics professed is not found in the Bible, indeed, it is opposed to what is found in the Bible. So, what that tells us is that such “secret truth” was nothing but flat-out lies!

I will tell you this, when someone attends an orthodox church that teaches orthodox truth, that holds its members to biblical standards and yet leaves that church because they don’t like what is being taught, or because another church that isn’t orthodox seems more appealing to them, there is a good probability that that person was never really of us.

John does not leave us guessing as to where assurance is found. It is not found in secret knowledge, novel teachings, or spiritual experiences that promise something more than Christ. Assurance is found in the truth once delivered, the truth you already know, the truth revealed openly in Scripture. The question is not whether the world has many opinions about Jesus—it always has. The question is whether we will confess the Jesus Who is, rather than settle for a Jesus remade in our own image.

Beloved, John reminds us that neutrality is impossible. To deny the Son is to deny the Father. To distort Christ is to reject God. But the promise is just as clear and just as comforting: whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. To cling to Christ as He is revealed in the gospel is to be held fast by the Triune God Himself.

So do not be shaken by counterfeits. Do not be enticed by voices that promise more than Scripture gives. Abide in what you have heard from the beginning. Know the truth. Love the truth. Confess the truth. And rest in this confidence: the God Who has revealed Himself in His Son will never let go of those Who truly belong to Him.

Amen?