May 28 – 1 John 2:18-29

Main focus: Abiding in Jesus bears the fruit of faithfulness and steadfastness—if you want to make it to the finish, cling to him.

Steel yourself; this week’s passage talks about the antichrist. Not that you should be worried—the passage is pretty straightforward—but people get kinda squirrelly when you drop “antichrist” in a sentence. John uses it here in a kind of unique way, which we’ll get to in a moment, but in summary, John is warning us against the pitfalls of deception and driving us towards the source of all truth and eternal security: Jesus. 

Let’s take a moment to remember the flow of John’s letter thus far. In chapter 1 through 2:17 he’s been demonstrating the incompatibility between following Jesus and following the way of the world. We can’t walk in darkness and light at the same time, we can’t say we know Jesus if we don’t walk in his ways, and we can’t love the Father if we are infatuated with the world. And, as we mentioned a few weeks ago, John shares all of this to give us confidence as we live into the implications of our faith in Jesus. He’ll pick that up again and again, summarized in 5:13, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”

All of this feeds into what John covers here in 2:18-29: truth and lies are distinct and incompatible, yet we have confidence in the face of deception because we belong to Jesus. When he brings up these lies and deception, he does so with this specific term, “antichrist.” When we hear that word we tend to hear it capitalized, The Antichrist, an invective that gets thrown at public figures from time to time, particularly at presidential candidates and/or anyone suspected of belonging to the Illuminati. For this and other reasons, we tend to avoid conversations that stray into those waters, or similarly spooky End Times discussions. 

But note that John says next to nothing about The Antichrist (and neither does the New Testament for that matter; let’s not major on the minors, folks). Also, aside from verse 18, John uses that term here in a way we typically don’t, in the plural, to describe specifically those who had recently left the faith (2:19) and generally those who deny that Jesus is the Son of God (2:22). Once again, John is deploying polarizing language to show the clear distinction between those who belong to Jesus and those who don’t. You’re either pro-Christ or anti-Christ; there’s no in-between. We’ll have a question in discussion to touch on this, which also gives you a chance to clear out the “antichrist” heebie jeebies and keep moving with the rest of the passage. 

That’s especially necessary because the emphasis of the passage isn’t on antichrist(s) but on the broader threat of deception and confidence through Jesus. This explains the very serious language John uses to describe these folks that have left the church and deny Jesus—John is connecting them to the anti-Jesus kingpin, Satan himself, the “father of lies.” John intends to warn his Christian readers against those who would persuade them to join their departure from the faith (2:26). But immediately after this John reassures them with the confidence we have in Jesus, “But the anointing [i.e. the Holy Spirit] that you received from him abides in you” (2:27). What shall we do in the face of forces in this world that would seek to lampoon our savior and hamstring our faith? We don’t wage our own war or retaliate with the same weapons. Instead, we simply abide. 

In discussion, we’ll turn to John 15:1-11 to get a fuller picture of what it means to abide in Jesus. There Jesus describes himself like a vine and his followers like branches grafted into him. Abiding in order to withstand temptation and deception doesn’t mean just trying harder or doing better. We have to have a new source of life, a stream of sustenance from which we drink, a connection to the only one who can conquer sin and The Deceiver. Jesus himself is the way, the truth, and the life. From abiding in Jesus, a posture and practice of relational intimacy with him, we can thus resist temptation, remembering in whom we have life to the full, and we can resist deception, remembering the Truth that has set us free.