Because relationships matter most of all #7: knowing what and who to believe

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—eternal life.

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.  1 John 2:18-27

OK, so this is a tough passage to get our heads around, not least of all because the idea of the Antichrist can strike fear into our hearts and cause us to panic. Most of us get our ideas about the Antichrist from a subsection of the horror film/book genre: pure evil, violent, foul-mouthed, the antithesis of Christ. However, according to the Enduring Word Bible Commentary, the word for ‘anti’ does not just translate as ‘opposite/against’ but also as ‘instead of”. We may think that the Antichrist will appear as a supremely evil person, an ugly and repulsive character doing unspeakable evil. But what if he is more of an ‘instead of Jesus’? ‘He will look wonderful, be charming and successful. He will be the ultimate winner, and appear as an angel of light.’ This charismatic individual could be associated with a powerful political system/a powerful government. Maybe that person is already among us…

John is actually the only one of the Bible writers who uses this term ‘Antichrist’, but throughout the Bible, this character is defined and described in many other ways.

Essentially, the Antichrist is a world dictator who leads humanity in what seems to be a golden age, until he shows his true colours – and the judgement of God is poured out on him and his empire immediately before the return of Jesus. Enduring Word Bible Commentary

The world stage is set, is it not, for this kind of leader. There are those skilled in building up a kind of personality cult around one individual – and many of us fall into the worship of celebrity and popularity in politics as much as in the media. We’ve become conditioned to accept and vote for these kind of leaders today – those who promise so much and deliver so little, those who peddle in lies and deceit, but put on a great show.

However, this Antichrist is not the focus of this passage from 1 John. There is a difference between the Antichrist with a capital ‘A’ and the antichrists with a small ‘a’. There is a ‘spirit’ of antichrist in these individuals who deny Jesus and offer an alternative spirituality. This is what John is addressing because this was what he is dealing with. John knew there was those spreading deception and lies among these early Christians, and it concerned him. The original teaching about Jesus was becoming diluted and confused by false teachers offering false teachings about Jesus. They may have appeared spiritual, but they were messing with the truth. Some were saying that Jesus was just a good man, never fully God and fully human at the time. For John, his passion to keep them consistent with God’s message of truth was non-negotiable. A false, substitute Christ is no Christ at all.

The really scary things is that the people spreading these kind of lies were not from outside the community of believers, but from within. They’d been believers themselves but had walked away from their faith and all that they had believed in. This isn’t about people leaving to worship at another church (although some people do become known as church-hoppers and can never find a place to worship that is good enough/spiritual enough for them…and what does that say about them?) This is about those individuals who reject Jesus and turn on believers, questioning everything they stand for and trying to lure them away with a more attractive path to follow. It is not for us to judge – only God can see the heart – but we do need to be wary of those who speak out against Jesus or offer an alternative way.

Only Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

So how do we know who to listen to? How can we prevent ourselves from being led astray by false teaching?

We do have to be on our guard, yes, but we do not have to be afraid. We have the knowledge of the truth embedded within us and we can know whether what we are being told rings true or not. We should never accept anything anyone says as gospel, however appealing their words are and however spiritual they appear to be.

John asserts that all who follow Jesus and abide in him (more on that word ‘abide’ in a moment) are anointed and that it is this anointing that makes discernment possible. We do not have to do anything to earn it: being filled with and blessed by the Holy Spirit is the common property of all believers. And so each one of us possesses the resources for knowing the truth. Knowing is about experience and head knowledge, but also includes intuition. Over time, we will learn to recognise and trust our intuition.

This will come more and more as we abide in Jesus: rest in him, be rooted in him, live with him at the centre of our lives. According to John, we have to believe first of all that Jesus lived a life on earth as fully God and fully man and perfectly revealed the Father to us. That is non-negotiable.

And then we enter into a living, growing relationship (a two-way relationship – we abide in Him and He abides in us) that needs to be given time and attention and care to develop. If we abide in the original, core Christian message that we heard from the beginning), we will not be led astray. We must not be distracted by the new, the shiny and the exciting, mistakenly thinking that new is always better. It is not. How can anything be better?

God lives in us. His truth lives in us. Our eternal life starts right here and now.

One final point – and it’s actually the point where John starts in this passage: John lived in a state of urgency. He believed Jesus would return to earth to gather all believers to himself and he believed that would happen soon. That sense of urgency informed how he lived and taught. It left no room for complacency. 2000 years later, it’s easy to lose sight of that urgency, but Jesus will come again, that’s the truth of it, and we are called to be prepared.