As we ended last week’s study, we saw John giving us a powerful comparison. 

On the one hand we had those who love the World and therefore lack the love of the Father, 

on the other hand, we had those who do the will of God, abiding in Him forever.

“Forever” is a wonderful, amazing word in Scripture, there’s nothing you or I experience quite like “forever.” 

Everything that you and I experience has an end

To hear that those who follow God abide in Him forever feels almost too good to be true, yet here it is on the pages of scripture, guaranteed to be true.

But John knows as well as you and I do that this “abiding forever” doesn’t seem to always match our experience.

It is a well know fact that there are those who join us in the church for a time, follow all the rules, display their love for Jesus the same as you and me and then one day something changes. They walk away.

It could be a close friend, maybe a family member, but, for that person, rather than abiding with Christ forever and always, they decide they don’t believe the same way anymore and they walk away. 

We’re not talking about someone who goes down the street to another church

Someone who loves Jesus just as much, but they seek out a different congregation because of doctrinal differences or personal conflict or maybe they just move and live too far away.

Unity and togetherness amongst the church is a very important topic in scripture, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.

We’re talking about someone who has fully deconverted, they’re gone from a “Christian” or a follower of Christ, and now they are someone who John refers to as an “antichrist.” Someone who is against Christ.

That’s all the word “antichrist” means, against Christ.

In our passage today, John’s next focus in his letter is explaining this perceived difference between what he’s said to be true and what our experience is.

He just laid out a powerful truth of “abiding forever” with God but the experience of the church he’s writing to is that many believers were being led astray to follow the teachings of the Gnostics and thus denying Jesus Christ as God and denying the sufficiency of his death.

Not only does John need to reconcile this perceived difference, but he needs to address the resulting fear that surrounds this topic: if it’s possible for some to walk away from God and lose this “abiding forever”, how can we as Christ followers be sure that we won’t do the same.

You and I may not be seeing people flock to Gnosticism anymore, but we certainly do see Christians walking away from their faith and deconverting, and we need to know just as much as John’s original audience what’s going on and how we can be assured that we won’t accidently fall in to the same mistake.

The lesson today is entitled “It’s about who you know.”

Starting in verse 18 we have to understand some tricky terminology

18 Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.

Our first question is what does John mean by the last hour? The last hour of what? And if it was the last hour when John wrote this, is it still the last hour today for you and me nearly 2000 years later?

Immediately our interest is drawn to this discussion about a coming “antichrist” and how we are in the “last hour.”

But if you notice, John’s goal isn’t to try and explain something new about the Antichrist, but to use knowledge that his audience is already familiar with to prove a point.

John’s point here is not to derail his discussion with topics about the end times, but to make a point about what’s going on currently, in his time and in ours still today.

We, likewise, won’t spend the time to do a comprehensive study on the big “A” Antichrist, the man of lawlessness as he’s described in 2 Thessalonians 2.

But we do have to understand the basics enough to get John’s point here in verse 18. We have to understand what it is they “have heard,” this isn’t John’s main focus, so it won’t be the main focus of our lesson, I’m going to touch on these things informally and quickly, if you want more details on these topics I suggest referring back to the Revelation study we did here on Wednesday nights three or four years ago.

Throughout the entire Bible, from prophecy of the Old Testament all the way to the words of Jesus himself and the writings of the apostles in the New Testament, the topic of the last hour or last days comes up numerous times.

These last days always refer to a period of time when one “age” comes to an end, right before the next “age.” 

John, you and I are all in the same “age” of time.

We’re separated from God in our sin, we’re waiting on the Messiah, Jesus, to come rescue us from our sin and start a new age where He’ll reign as a perfect king over the whole earth.

So these “last days” represent the time where our age is almost finished, right before the next one begins.

We’re almost done waiting on the Lord, we’ve almost arrived at this next age.

How can it have been the last hour 2000 years ago and also still the last hour today?

It’s because all of the events that end this age and bring in the new age could happen at any time. They’re not waiting on anything else first.

Don’t think about the last hour in terms of years or time, think about it in terms of an event schedule.

Before Jesus came the first time, it wasn’t the last days or the last hour because God had promised that He would first send the Messiah to die and take away the sin of the world, this age couldn’t come to an end because that hadn’t happened yet.

There was stuff on the schedule that came before the end of the age. Until that stuff has happened, it can’t be the end.

After Jesus died and rose again, He left and promised to return again and there is nothing else that needs to happen first in order for Him to come back.

The schedule is now empty, the next on the schedule is the end of the age which includes a lot of stuff, like Jesus coming and getting his church in the Rapture

like the Antichrist being revealed, there’s a lot that goes on at the end.

With that background, we can now understand what John is talking about here. Remember that his focus is not the big “A” Antichrist who’s coming, his focus is on the people in the meantime who are denying Christ and falling away from the church.

The little “a” antichrists.

He even gives us a helpful definition of who he’s talking about down in verse 22.

The little “a” antichrists are people who deny the father and the son.

John is saying that while those who do the will of God will abide forever, we shouldn’t be surprised that people are denying Him and falling away in the meantime, because things are going to get worse before they get better.

He says that just like the Antichrist is coming in the future to deny God, there will be more and more people like him in the meantime during these last days as we get closer and closer to the end of the age.

So what is really going on when these Christians turn anti-christ. 

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.

John’s next verse gives us our first point for tonight: Those who deny Christ never knew Him.

John’s words here are so plain, so deceptively simple that it feels like it shouldn’t be hard at all to understand, but when we take these words apply them to our real lives and real situations it becomes a lot harder to understand this truth.

The simple matter of it is that those Christians who later deny Christ have not gone through some spiritual change, they’re simply making it plainly known that they never knew Him to begin with.

John says that if they really were part of us then they would have continued with us. The very fact that they have gone out from us makes it plain that they aren’t the same as us.

I can’t stand up here and pretend this isn’t hard to hear and hard to say. I’m sure almost everyone in this room can think of friends or siblings or kids or someone else we were close with that stepped away from Jesus and it hurts to imagine that they never really had that relationship with Jesus they pretended to.

In the midst of this very difficult, nearly sorrowful point, there are two beautiful graces that God has given us.

1. There may be false confessors, but there are also false deniers. Those who truly know Jesus but because of fear or hardship choose to deny Him in a moment, only to return to Him later.

Who would know about this better than John himself?

When Jesus, His Lord, was being arrested led away to his death, how did the apostles, specifically John, react?

Mark 14:50-52

50 And they all left him and fled. 51 And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

Maybe as John writes these words He’s even thinking of his friend Peter, who famously denied that he ever knew Jesus three times right in front of Jesus, only to later reconcile and become a great leader in the church.

As church tradition holds, Peter had likely already been martyred for his faith by the time John is writing his letters. Faithfully following his Lord.

The bottom line is that God makes things plain in the end, 

if someone really does abide forever in Him, they may have moments where they faulter, but they will return to Him in faith.

If someone doesn’t know truly know Him and is pretending, they may pretend for a long time, decades even, but eventually God makes things plain.

2. The second grace in the midst of this difficult truth is that things being made plain is a blessing.

It’s not our responsibility, nor is it even possible to judge if someone’s heart truly does know the Lord or if they’re pretending. 

That is a matter between them and God alone.

If someone in the church really is pretending, then they need the salvation brought about by hearing the Gospel just as much as anyone else does, 

but sometimes it’s harder for us to tell that they need belief in the Gospel when they’re pretending that they already have it.

By God making their true heart plainly visible He’s providing a grace to us that we can more clearly see the need for Gospel truth in their lives.

Whether it’s a close friend, a family member or even one of the students in our youth group, I’d much rather them be honest and say “you know what, I don’t really believe in Jesus at all, I’ve been pretending the whole time.”

I’d take that over pretending any day.

That way I can know more clearly who needs my prayers, I can know better how to talk to them about the love of Jesus they’re missing out on.

Hallelujah for God making things plain.

How can we know that we’re not pretending? How can we be sure that we really know the Lord?

It’s one thing to know that God will make plain the hearts of the people around us, but if the people around us can be pretending, that can start to create a fear in us over whether we truly know the Lord or if we’re pretending ourselves.

This is the next point that John addresses and the next point in our study tonight: Those who know Christ are assured eternal life.

20 But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 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. 24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.

In contrast to those who are not of us, those who go out from us, John says that we’re different because of two things:

We have been anointed by the Holy One and we have knowledge. 

When someone is saved and they go from being an unbeliever to a believer, God marks them out spiritually in a special way called anointing.

He sends His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God Himself, to personally indwell every believer.

John himself recorded Jesus’s words about this anointing in John chapter 15 and 16, here’s a sample from John 16:7-8

7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

One way we can know that we are different than those that pretend then fall away is that we have the Spirit of God inside of us, capable of teaching and convicting us.

A true Christian that tries to go back to a life of sin and denial of Christ’s power will quickly find they can’t keep it up for long.

There’s no one more truly miserable than a Christian in unrepentant sin because they’re missing out on the joy and fellowship of following Jesus but they can’t enjoy their sin like they used to because they have the very Spirit of God convicting them from the inside.

If you were trying to really ground yourself in assurance that you had eternal life, that you were saved, what would help more?: [ Joke about making everyone run to different sides of the room like a youth group game ]

Memorizing the entire law of Moses or having God speak directly to you in clear words like the prophets?

Probably having God speaking directly to you

Having God speak directly to you or sitting at the feet of Jesus himself hearing him teach?

Sitting with Jesus himself, of course.

Sitting with Jesus Himself or coming to worship at VBVF and feeling the Holy Spirit move?

This seems like a trick question; shouldn’t it be sitting with Jesus?

Thousands of people followed Jesus and sat with Him but many fell away, even Judas Iscariot who was one of the twelve closest did not truly believe in Him.

Yet Jesus says that it is better that He goes away so that we can receive the Holy Spirit.

Think about this: the anointing of the Holy Spirit or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is more valuable to us than even the physical presence of Jesus if He were to be standing in front of us.

John says that all you need to be assured that you are not like those who fall away is to be confident the Holy Spirit indwells you and that you have knowledge of God.

The fact that John decides to add “knowledge” as a second reason to be assured of our salvation here is very, very interesting. 

Remember that the main false teaching that John was trying to address in this letter was the false teaching called Gnosticism. Tony’s talked about this a couple times through this study already.

One of the core principles of Gnosticism is that you need special, secret knowledge about God in order to be saved.

Here John says that we are different from the antichrists because we have knowledge, because we have the truth. Which knowledge is he talking about?

Knowledge is a very broad category so let’s define what types of knowledge we could be talking about and then use the context from the chapter to help us understand which one John is talking about.

The word you and I use “knowledge” or “know” is overloaded, it means two different things. Let me show you by finding out who here “knows” Pastor Tony.

[ A fun illustration using a quiz ]

According to the quiz I know Pastor Tony better than anyone.

But isn’t it obvious that many people in here have a closer relationship with Tony than I do?

I may know lots of obscure things about Pastor Tony, but we say “I know Pastor Tony” we’re not meaning “I know about Pastor Tony” we’re meaning “I have a relationship with Pastor Tony.”

This may be self-evident to some of my bi-lingual friends listening right now because a lot of languages actually use two different words where English only has one.

I know German separates these words and surely in a San Antonio church a lot of you are internally screaming at me because Spanish makes this distinction too.

It is true that I know about Pastor Tony and that I also know Pastor Tony but it’s not because I can answer quiz questions about him, 

It’s because I’ve spent time with him and built a relationship, we’ve spent time together and communicated with each other.

I’ve played frisbee with Pastor Tony.

I beat Pastor Tony in a video game tournament at his house and he was a little upset about that.

Pastor Tony and I were both in the market to buy a house at the same time in the same price range, I actually but an offer on the house he ended buying and he toured the house I ended buying before I did. 

We would send each other memes about how bad the housing market was last year. 

Knowledge can either be informational/taught knowledge, head knowledge, or it can be observational/experienced knowledge, relationship knowledge. 

Which kind of knowledge is John referring to here?

The Gnostics valued knowledge above almost anything else, and they specifically borrowed from the philosopher Plato and thought that knowledge from logical reasoning, or head knowledge, was good knowledge but knowledge from personal experience and observation wasn’t worthwhile knowledge. 

John says that we have knowledge but the antichrists deny Jesus Christ and the Father

John says that we have a personal indwelling of the Spirit while the antichrists go out from us and don’t fellowship with us.

John says that we don’t need any secret bonus knowledge, if we abide in what we heard from the beginning then we will abide with the Son and the Father.

All of John’s language here is deemphasizing secret head knowledge and instead focusing on a personal, relational knowledge of Jesus based only on the Gospel we heard all the way in the beginning. 

According to verse 20, the two ways we can be sure that we aren’t pretenders, that we aren’t going to deny Christ like the antichrists that go out from the church is this:

1. We have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit inside of us, helping us grow closer to God and further from sin

2. We have a personal, relational knowledge of Jesus based on nothing more than the truth of the Gospel.

In verse 21 he clarifies: he’s not telling us this because it’s new information, he’s telling us this to help fight off the lies that these false teachers are trying to burden the church with. 

But we know the truth.

The question we might ask is “what is the truth he’s referring to?” 

The question John wants us to ask is “who is the truth?”

John already answered this is the gospel of John, chapter 14 verse 5-6

5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.[d] From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

This sounds almost exactly like verses 22 and 23 in our passage today.

Verses 20-24 refer over and over again to the fact that believers are those who *know God* in a real, personal, intimate way. The whole Trinity. They’re indwelled by His Spirit, they know the Son and because they know the Son they know the Father also.

Then John concludes his point in verse 25: God has promised that those who know Him will be given eternal life.

What is this eternal life?

You should know better by now that that’s the wrong question to ask in this book.

The question is not what is eternal life, it’s who is eternal life?

Flip back a page and remind yourself how this entire letter started in chapter 1 verses 1-2

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—

The eternal life that God gives us is not a concept or a power, it’s a person. 

Having eternal life is the same knowing Jesus and knowing Jesus is the same as having eternal life.

One is not the means to the other, they are the same thing.

Now John has addressed the many people walking away from the faith and denying Christ, that they never truly knew Jesus. Then he’s addressed how we can still be assured that we truly do have eternal life, by our relationship with Jesus.

Next John is going on the full offensive against those who were trying to tell the church that they needed some special or secret knowledge taught to them in order to truly know God.

26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. 27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

John gives us our final point for today’s study: Those who abide in the Spirit have all they need

That anointing of God, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, is capable of teaching us God’s will perfectly. 

All we need to do is abide in Him and we will have everything we need.

If God needed you to know something about Himself, some secret knowledge that you didn’t already know, He wouldn’t need a special preacher full of charisma to come along and teach you, just like John’s original audience didn’t need a special Gnostic teacher to come along and share that secret knowledge with them.

His very Spirit indwells you, He’s capable of teaching you whatever you need when you need it.

Two questions come to my mind right away, the first being “Okay, so the Holy Spirit is sufficient to teach us whatever we need whenever we need it, then why do we have preachers and teachers in the first place?”

We have to be very careful here, because if John is addressing one extreme end of the spectrum, we don’t run to automatically run to the complete opposite side and fall into a mistake there.

Just because there’s no secret knowledge reserved for some holy teacher to come along and share with you, doesn’t mean that you have no need for teaching and guidance outside of yourself.

How do I know that when John says “you have no need that anyone should teach you” that he doesn’t literally mean that no one should teach you apart form the Holy Spirit? Isn’t that what the plain words mean?

There are two reasons we can know that can’t possibly be what John means, the first reason comes from scripture and the second is intuitive.

The first reason we can know that there is great value in sitting under Biblical teaching is that scripture is full of commands to teach and preach the word.

Teaching is a Spiritual gift referenced several times in the New Testament

The Proverbs are full of references to the wisdom of sitting under wise counsel and sound teaching.

Even in our 1 Timorthy study we’ve seen Paul charge Timothy in chapter 4 to faithfully teach the scriptures to his congregation

11 Command and teach these things. 12 Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. 13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. 14 Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. 15 Practice these things, immerse yourself in them,[c] so that all may see your progress. 16 Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

To take this one sentence from 1 John 2 out of context and conclude that there’s no value in the teaching of scripture is to both ignore the context of first 1 John and to ignore the rest of scripture on the topic.

The second reason I know definitively that John can’t be saying there is no need for teaching apart from the internal teaching of the Holy Spirit should be so obvious that it makes you laugh:

Why has John taken the time to write a five chapter letter if no one needed to be taught anything that was in the letter?

That’s like me standing up at this pulpit and declaring that there’s no value to anyone preaching to you from a pulpit.

It’s a nonsensical and self-defeating argument if that’s what John is trying to say.

If John can’t be saying that there’s no benefit in teaching, then what is he saying?

He’s saying that the only teaching of any value, the only teaching that is definitively true and the only teaching that you truly need is teaching that comes from the Holy Spirit.

Here’s the thing though, The Holy Spirit can speak in numerous ways but primarily speaks through public preaching and private meditation on God’s word.

As a teacher that means that nothing, I say up here has any value whatsoever apart from what the Holy Spirit does with it.

I pray that I and the rest of the teachers that stand up here never forget that.

When I prepare a lesson out of God’s word at home, I start every one on my knees in prayer because I know that apart from the Holy Spirit, nothing I say will teach anyone anything of any value.

It also means that there’s no Bible teacher in the entire world who has such a special and unique knowledge of God that God can’t use someone else for the same task.

Every one of us teaches from the same Spirit, some are further along in maturity, some have been given different giftings or different perspectives, but we’re all teaching through the same Spirit who is sufficient for all teaching.

As someone sitting under teaching, it means that you need to be careful the amount of value you place on who is delivering the message.

If someone is teaching outside of the Holy Spirit, if they’re teaching denies the Son and the Father then there is no reason to take any value from what they say, they have nothing to teach you.

On the other hand, if they’re teaching by the power of the Holy Spirit, you need to be paying attention and listening to what the Spirit is telling you.

It may not be your favorite style

The teacher might come from a different background 

or hold slightly different beliefs than you do on certain topics, 

but if they’re teaching under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and they’re preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then be careful not to discount what they’re saying because God very well may be teaching you something through their words.

That’s the end of our first question for verses 26 and 27. But what’s the second question.

The second question that comes up is: “How do I actually ‘abide’ in the Holy Spirit? What does that literally mean?

The funny thing is that while I will go through some examples to the best of my ability, according to verse 27 the Holy Spirit will actually teach you to abide in Him.

The whole point is that there’s no secret knowledge that I can give you that will draw you closer to God,

If you have put your faith in Jesus Christ as your savior and the Holy Spirit indwells you and you have a personal relationship with Jesus then you have everything you need in order to abide in Him and He will guide you and teach you if you’re listening to Him.

But I understand that it can be hard to know where to start or how to break out of your normal patterns and really find out what it means to abide in Christ.

The short answer is spending time reading God’s word and praying every day consistently.

The good news is that we don’t have to figure it out ourselves, you have so many examples to look to.

Look to examples in the scriptures of Godly men and women who abide with God.

King David, called a man after God’s own heart, wrote a huge number of the Psalms in the book of Psalms. Songs of praise and lament and triumph and sadness. Read those Psalms to learn more about David’s heart.

Psalm 119 in particular shows just how deeply David cherished time reading scripture.

Jesus Himself took purposeful time away from the crowds of people constantly surrounding him to pray to His father. 

Look to examples in Church history of Godly men and women, or examples in this very church of mature believers with a close relationship with God, go ask them how they got that, I’m sure every one of them will happily tell you.

Think about the close relationships in your life, how did they get so close?

Are you close with your parents or your children because you read a lot of interesting articles about them?

Are you close with your best friend because you listen to a podcast about them?

Are you close with your spouse because someone came along and told you all their secrets?

No, building strong relationships requires time together, it requires communication back and forth and it requires making that person a priority in your life above other things.

This is what people mean if you’ve ever heard the phrase “It’s about relationship, not religion.”

It’s a silly phrase because religion can mean good or bad things depending on who says it, and worship of Jesus is certainly our religion.

But the intent of the phrase is to point out that it’s easy to turn Christianity into only a religion

A set of rules or instructions to follow like “go to church,” “obey your parents,” “volunteer and tither.” 

In reality the way we become a Christian is a relationship with God and the way we grow as a Christian is in our relationship with God. It’s about who you know.