Scripture Daily

Context No. 149 of 4322 · 1 John

Context · Reflection

1 John 2:18-23: in context

18Little children, these are the end times, and as you heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen. By this we know that it is the final hour. 19They went out from us, but they didn’t belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have continued with us. But they left, that they might be revealed that none of them belong to us. 20You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 21I have not written to you because you don’t know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. 22Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23Whoever denies the Son doesn’t have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.

The community John writes to has just been through a split. A group left, and the letter is written partly to steady the people who stayed and are wondering what it meant. This passage is his account of it.

He calls it the last hour, and says that just as they heard an antichrist was coming, many antichrists have come. The word means one who stands in place of or against Christ, and John uses it in the plural and in the present tense, about people they knew. Then the sentence that interprets the split: they went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us they would have remained. Their leaving made something plain that was already true.

Then he turns to the ones still there and does not flatter them. You have been anointed by the Holy One and you all know. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you do, and because no lie comes from the truth. He treats the people who stayed as already competent to tell the difference. When people I trusted walk away from something, do I let their leaving redefine what I thought I knew?

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