1 John 2:18-27 - Abide in Him!

Previously, mentioned that John’s purpose is to give assurance to Christians in the midst of trial. Conflict is not just likely for Christians; it is a guaranteed side effect of belonging to Jesus.

Already seen John’s concern for his spiritual children, that they would stand firm in the truth of Jesus Christ. “Children” v18, “little children” v28 - assurance found in rightly identifying false believers and in abiding in the Truth

Differentiating between true and false believers, because there was a group who was claiming to be followers of Jesus, but they had abandoned the truth about Jesus, and had abandoned God’s people.

Today, John gives those people a name, and it’s a shocking name. But it’s one we need to understand and apply. Identifying those whom John calls “antichrists” helps us resist the urge to compromise on the things that the LORD has said we must not give up. It also helps us protect one another from false teaching.

John tells us why this is so important in verse 26: “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.” To put it differently, John is unmasking ravenous wolves who masquerade as spiritual guides and pretend to be harmless fuzzballs.

Q. How can we recognize and reject spiritual deception?

2 main points - the counterfeits and the genuine article

I. Antichrists abandon God’s people and God’s truth (18-19, 22-23)

EXPLAIN:

John says “It is the last hour,” and we know this because, he says, “many antichrists have come.”

The last hour is John’s way of calling us to keep watch for the return of Jesus.

It’s what the book of Daniel calls the time of the end, and John describes the same period again in Revelation 13-20, all leading up to the return of Jesus, the Final Resurrection and Judgment, and the New Jerusalem.

The last hour is the period that Jesus refers to in John 12 as the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified, and the time for the world to be judged, and the ruler of this world to be cast out.

It starts with His crucifixion and resurrection, and concludes with His return.

But what about the antichrist? You might be surprised to hear that the term is very uncommon even in Bible texts that talk about the end times. In fact, it only occurs here, in chapter 4, and once in 2 John. So what is, “antichrist?”

In verse 18, John refers both to antichrist and antichrists, singular and plural.

And in verse 22, he says that the antichrist is a liar who denies the truth about Jesus and therefore denies both the Father and the Son.

In 1 John 4:1-4, we learn that false prophets, who don’t come from God, speak lies about Jesus because they’re animated by the spirit of the antichrist.

Antichrist means counterfeit Christ, and it also means opponent of Christ.

John’s readers heard that antichrist was coming when Jesus said so in Matthew 24. He said in verses 4-5 that many would come in His name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and lead many astray. And in Matthew 24:11, he says that many false prophets would arise and lead many astray. This is in the middle of a section where Jesus is encouraging his disciples not to be deceived. He says in 24:44, “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

So, John says, you’ve heard this, and you see it happening. Don’t be deceived by them.

So to avoid deception, we must identify antichrists. The two defining features are given in verses 19 and 22 - antichrists abandon God’s people and they abandon God’s truth.

The first identifying feature of an antichrist is that they reject the fellowship of believers. We’re not talking about Christians who leave one church for another genuine church. We’re talking about people who appear to be Christians, but eventually their unregenerate nature shows itself.

1 John 2:19 ESV

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

It might shock you to realize this: Antichrists start out in churches. They’re regular people, they grow up with Christians, they make professions of faith, they get baptized, they’re somebody’s kid, somebody’s sister.

There is a final Antichrist, the one to whom all the rest points, who we see in Revelation, empowered by Satan to deceive the nations, whom John calls the Beast, but until he shows up, antichrists have been plentiful for the last two thousand years. Some of them have had huge religious followings. Some have been complete unknowns.

But they become known to us when they depart. They will not abide Biblical teaching, will not submit to God’s design for Christian fellowship. Either they stand up and leave on their own, or when they’re unmasked, usually through church discipline, their refusal to repent and be reconciled demonstrates that they never knew the Lord. John doesn’t say “They went out from us, but they used to be of us.” He says “They were not of us.”

The second identifying feature of antichrists is given in verses 22-23:

1 John 2:22–23 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. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Antichrists abandon God’s people and abandon God’s truth.

We saw at the beginning of chapter 2 that the key diagnostic to tell believers from pretenders was “Who keeps God’s commands? And who rejects them?” God’s people belong to Him, and cherish His commands, and believe His Words as the words of eternal life. We have the authoritative, apostolic testimony about Jesus right here; as Paul says, from Genesis to Revelation, every single writing in this book is God-breathed. Peter says that this is the product of God’s Holy Spirit carrying men along as they wrote.

But antichrists seek to deceive you with denials of God’s Word.

If they had belonged to God’s people, they would have continued with God’s people, in common cause and common faith.

These counterfeit Christs, these opponents of Christ, deny that Jesus is the Christ - either by claiming He wasn’t the Messiah or by denying that He is the Divine Son of God, the eternal Word made flesh in the virgin womb of Mary.

In John’s day, his chief opponent was a man named Cerinthus, who claimed that the apostles had it wrong, that Jesus was just a man and that Christ was what empowered him, but left him before his crucifixion. He denied that Jesus was the Christ.

Every Christian cult and heresy seeks to subtly undermine Biblical truth by using familiar language. The heart of every heresy is that there is some new discovery or deeper truth that turns out to contradict what Jesus has said.

So if we are to unmask the antichrists, start here:

If they claim to know God, but they deny that He is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they are deceivers.

If they claim to have spiritual insight, but they deny that God the Father sent God the Son to become incarnate as Jesus Christ, who died a substitutionary death for our sins and was raised bodily on the third day, they are liars and the truth is not in them.

And when their teachings are unmasked as false, if they persist in their false teachings, and so abandon God’s people through church discipline or by departing, they demonstrate that they are antichrist.

APPLY:

Let’s apply this real quick.

Off the top - cults - Mormonism, Christian Science - depart from the Word and abandon God’s people // blatant fakers - Islam (denies that Jesus is the Son of God), unbelieving Judaism (denies that Jesus is the Christ)

Apostate churches - Claim Christianity but reject Biblical truth re: God/Gospel; anyone who tells you that Jesus was created, or that He is not God the Son, the Lord, the Messiah // anyone who tells you that you can, should, or must be saved by anything other than the finished work of Jesus

I already mentioned a guy who lived in John’s time named Cerinthus. There’s a growing group of people who call themselves ex-vangelicals, who are mostly Millennials, who grew up somehow attached to evangelicalism but departed for various reasons.

Some of them have started spreading their message as podcasters and YouTubers. Their stories are often very similar. They grew up in conservative churches, they had questions or dissatisfactions and nobody would give them answers, and eventually they started the process that they’re now calling “deconstruction.” They’re taking apart their faith, and putting something else together in its place.

The end result for some of them is something they think is new and innovative and beautiful, but it’s actually the same lies that have plagued the Church since the Apostolic era. They say things like, “Jesus is great, but Christ is so much bigger than Jesus.” This is actually exactly what John warned against. They deny that Jesus is the Christ.

If you’ve encountered this kind of teaching, I want these words to sink deep down into your soul today: This is not Christianity. It is anti-christianity. The people peddling it, no matter how good their podcasts are, no matter how funny they are, no matter how young and handsome they are, John says, “I am writing these things about those who are trying to deceive you.”

It’s important to note that nothing they say is new. To be a student of Church History is to learn the truth of Ecclesiastes 1:9 - there is nothing new under the sun.

If you’ve been dipping your toes in the teaching of antichrists masquerading as liberated Christians, who have abandoned God’s Word and God’s people, there is no life there. Their religion is a perfumed corpse.

I know - everything I’ve been hearing recently coming out of this sort of new wave of false teaching, it’s new packaging on the same junk that I was tempted by in the 90s, and some of you think that was just an hour ago. And I know it’s hard to hear, because one of the reasons this stuff is so appealing to folks in their 20s and 30s is because it seems so fresh, it’s stuff you never heard before, but Church history is a continuous battle between what the Bible says about Jesus, sin, and salvation, and the same sweet-sounding, philosophically-attractive, world-pleasing lies about Jesus, sin, and salvation.

Another application for young adults, parents, and teens. A new avenue for false teaching is TikTok and other short-form social media. I’ve seen a few of these teachings going around, usually very similar, usually trying to tell you that everybody you know got it all wrong, that they all misunderstand or misinterpret or mistranslate the Bible on this or that point. The three big topics seem to be the identity of Jesus, hell, and sexuality. And in many cases, these are targeted at teens and college students. Does that surprise you?

So someone tells you they have all this firsthand knowledge, and how everybody in the Church has it all wrong, and then they dish out a heaping helping of heresy, and teens and young adults are getting sucked in.

So what I want you to hear is that their claims have been continuously and completely debunked in every generation. If you come sit down with me, I can show you how every one of the arguments fails. The Scriptures have always taught clearly that God created humanity in His own image, male and female, and the Good God who created sex told us what it’s for, and yes, there is a difference between good sex and evil sex, and if you’ve been deceived on this point by antichrists, there is freedom from that deception;

The Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, teach that the answer to sin and death is Christ’s substitutionary death and resurrection, and that those who believe in Him will have eternal life, and those who reject Him will experience eternal judgment for their sins. And both the Old and New Testaments teach that the Messiah, the Christ, is the eternal God who took on human nature.

I could keep going with other cults, but those are the ones that I’m seeing more and more. The reason I’m harping on this is that when I went away for college, I was woefully unprepared for the onslaught against the Scriptures that I would encounter again and again, and I see young people facing the same battles, and I want you to know: There are answers to the attacks. And nobody told me that there would be people who claimed to know God who would try to convince me that they had discovered something better than the Gospel that Scripture gives us. Don’t be deceived: Unmask the antichrist, who abandons God’s people and His Word, and if you’ve fallen prey to this kind of deceiver, seek the help of a wise Christian who can help you work through the questions that you have.

That’s enough of that, let’s look at the good news. Our second point is that

II. Christians abide in God’s truth because they are anointed by God’s Spirit (20-21, 24-27)

EXPLAIN:

Look at verses 20-21 with me. <<READ>>

What is the difference between the Christian and the antichrist? It’s not intelligence, it’s not strength of will, it’s not moral victory. The difference is anointing.

To be anointed is to be set apart by God. In the Old Testament, when the prophet Samuel went to Bethlehem, to set apart the next king over Israel, the LORD told him to anoint Jesse’s son, David. So Samuel took olive oil and poured it over his head. And in the moment that he did so, 1 Samuel 16 says that the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for anointed one is Messiah. In the New Testament, in Greek, the word is Christ. God sent Jesus as the one set apart, anointed, for His mission of salvation. Throughout the Gospels, the Holy Spirit is with Jesus, the proof that He is on the Father’s mission. And just as He promised, when He returned to His Father’s side, He poured out the Holy Spirit on His people.

When you were redeemed, like when Samuel anointed David, the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon you. And that is what will keep you in Him. The Holy Spirit anointed you so that you will abide in Jesus, the Anointed One.

To put it another way, the only thing keeping a Christian from falling away is God’s mighty hand.

John says that everyone with this anointing also has knowledge - verse 21 specifies what kind of knowledge - knowledge of the truth. John draws a sharp distinction between truth and lies. So what exactly is the knowledge we’re talking about here?

Every single person who ever got saved was saved by the same Gospel. And this might seem simplistic at first, but John is absolutely telling you that the simple Gospel that I used to lead my little children to Christ is more spiritually advanced than the wisest, most learned teachings that deny it. Look, I’ll prove it to you:

Remember who he addressed back in verses 12-14 - little children, fathers, young men - look at 1 John 2:13: <<READ>>

Now look back at chapter 2:21-23 <<READ>>

Do you see?

Look down at verses 26-27 with me <<READ>>

So the littlest child who knows the Father knows more about God than the guy with the PhD who denies Jesus.

Does that sound insulting? Because it should. Because the whole point is this: Why would you go to the antichrist for training? He literally has nothing to teach you about God.

You notice, I assume, in verse 27 that he says “You have no need that anyone should teach you.” That’s a plural you, a collective you. You, the Church, the people of God, as a group, have no need to listen to false teachers. We have everything we need when we open His Word together, because we have His anointing. Every one of us who knows Him.

APPLY:

So let’s close by taking a look at the word “abide” in verses 24-27. <<READ 24-27>>

“Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.”

At the heart of Christian endurance and growth is the Gospel. That God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. That He is our advocate and our propitiation. That our sins are forgiven for His name’s sake.

No Christian ever outgrows the Good News of Jesus Christ. The best preachers are absolutely obsessed with the cross and the empty tomb, from year one till the day the LORD takes them. Sometimes Christians think that the Gospel is the milk, and meat is something else. But that’s a deadly mistake.

Growing in Christ always takes us deeper into the truth that we are sinners saved by God’s grace. It never takes us past it.

The proof is in John himself. Here’s a man who walked with Jesus from Capernaum to Jerusalem and back, through Samaria, across the Sea of Galilee to the Gerasenes. And after Jesus’s death and resurrection, and ascension, John wrote it down in the Gospel, and then in these letters, and Revelation. And here he is, in 1 John 2, probably in his eighties by this point, and every application he makes ties back to Jesus’s finished work on the cross. Do you want eternal life? Believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Do you want to know how to love your brothers and sisters? Look at the cross.

John ends verse 27, “Just as his anointing has taught you, abide in him.”

Christians abide in God’s truth because they are anointed by God’s Spirit. They remain, they continue, because they abide in Him.

When someone stands up to leave the faith, grab their hand and remind them to abide in Christ. When you hear a teaching that scratches a burning itch to abandon God’s Word or God’s people, abide in Him. And yes, Christian, you may feel the itch. I know, because I have felt it.

I told you before that nothing you hear today from antichrists is truly new. I mentioned the constant bombardment in college. And I know some of you have your faith attacked in high school and college today.

In about 1999, I felt the urge to go. To walk away and live however I wanted. It would have been so easy to walk away from Christianity. I was surrounded by false Christians telling me it was the way. I could keep the trappings and jettison the doctrine, and just go sing songs and have communion and be a pretender.

What stopped me? No matter how attractive it got, the Gospel kept ringing in my ears. Saved by grace. Jesus paid it all. But God demonstrated His love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

It wasn’t my own brilliance or anything else that rescued me. It was the Gospel. It still is.

You know, I can never get over the fact that the God of all the universe, the Creator of everything, including me, loved this sinner so much that He took on flesh and died in my place. I can never get over the fact that in eternity past, He had already chosen me, already knew every hair on my head, already knew every sin I would ever commit, every evil thought and deed, and He came for me anyway.

The deeper I get in His Word, the more that amazes me.

So abide in Him, when the whole world falls away, abide in Him.

Let the amazing grace of the Gospel always be ringing in your ears. Abide in the Gospel. Abide in in the fellowship of believers, so that even when you’re most tempted to depart, you’re surrounded by others speaking, preaching, singing the Good News of JC in your ears. That way, you’ll smell the freeze-dried fakers for what they are.

Colossians 3:16–17 ESV

16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Related Media

Related Sermons