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Sunday Service Message

Pinebrooke Community Church                                                   30 August 2026 Warning Regarding Antichrists                                                           1 John 2:18-28

          How do we know what we know when we live in such a world of opinion? Often, we experience people disputing facts so that we can’t even agree as to the facts especially if the facts are eyewitness testimony. The attack is often to eliminate any truth that is based on historical record.

     The common cause of much disputing is resident in the reality that each of us comes into experience with a perceptual framework and there is no getting away from that. Just recently I saw a criticism of a recent Supreme Court ruling that simply reflected a majority opinion the reflected the perceptual framework of the majority justices that are now codified as “originalists.” Their perceptual framework is rooted in trying to look at justice from the perspective of the framers of the Constitution.

     As it relates to our passage this week, a friend of mine proclaimed the superiority of Thomas Jefferson’s translation of the New Testament in which Jefferson removed all the references to Jesus’ deity and all of his historically confirmed miraculous signs and wonders because it didn’t fit Jefferson’s perceptual framework.

     An intelligent person as Thomas Jefferson couldn’t get beyond himself leaving him lost for eternity. His view of knowledge kept him from submitting to the Christ of salvation. The consequences were enormous for him, apart from saving faith and destined to an eternity apart from God. What we think truly matters and what we do with truth especially the truth of Christ is one of life’s greatest issues. Just recently I wrote a friend on her birthday that what she does with Jesus is the most important issue in life. She grew up in Utah around Mormons but presently wants nothing to do with God or Jesus.

1 John 2:18-28

          Our passage this week includes John’s fellowship with God is being tested on Christological grounds. John’s standard that he uses as a test is truth, particularly the truth which concerns the person of Christ. The error in Gnostic thought began with falsehood regarding Jesus. John’s point is only he who believers that Jesus is the Christ has fellowship with God and therefore a Christian. Fellowship is referred to as continuing or abiding or remaining in the Father and the Son. In the language John writes he uses the same word every time. In English we translate it as continuing, abiding, or remaining. The idea is that fellowship is an on-going affair.

     “The Gnostics, by their rejection of Jesus as the incarnate Christ, clearly demonstrated that they had never entered this saving relationship of fellowship.” (Burdick). John’s point in this letter again is that Christian faith has to be tested in the midst of a world of antichrist movements.

     John contrasts heretics and believers in vv. 18-21. “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. Jesus identified the two time periods in Mark 10:30 as the present age and the age to come. Paul describes it more specifically in Galatians 1:4 when he writes, “… the present age is characterized by evil from the fall of Adam to the second advent of Christ.” It is from the cross of Christ to the second coming that is referred to as “last hour”, “last days”, “last times.” The time since the cross is the concluding portion of this age.

     “Just as the Antichrist, the archenemy of the Lord and His people, will come during the days of the great tribulation, so now he is preceded by many who manifest in miniature his spirit of antagonism toward God (Burdick).” Jesus spoke of this when He said in Matthew 24:11, “… and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.”

     John’s specific reference was to the Gnostics of his day. In the words of our mentor, “Apparently where false teachers had once moved in the circles of believers, professing to be genuine Christians, but they went our (2:19), that is they severed their relations with God’s people (Burdick). John makes clear in John 1:1-4, fellowship is based on holding the truth of the incarnation in common. That is why the development of the various creeds, for example, The Apostle’s Creed became so important later in the life of the believing Church.

John Stott adds important wisdom to this conversation when he is quoted as saying, “Endurance is the half-mark of the saved.”

     In contrast are the true believers noted in 2:20-21, “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 te truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. They were anointed by God by possessing the Holy Spirit. By virtue of the indwelling Holy Spirit, were the recipients of true spiritual knowledge (Burdick). The Gnostics proposed that they knew a “higher truth” which John confronts through the testing process.

     The test for truth began with the Christological test vv. 22-25. The negative example begins with Cerinthus. He was a contemporary of John and was teaching that the divine Christ came upon the human Jesus at His baptism and then left Him just before His death. To the Cerinthian Gnostics the man Jesus and the divine Christ were two separate and distinct beings. Again, that comes from the presupposition that all that is material is evil and since Jesus came in the flesh, he naturally cannot be divine. Presuppositions matter! If you start with a false idea, the outcome will be false. It is like the notion that man is good or righteous, then you will have a hard time dealing with his sinful acts.

     John’s point in this epistle is that he who utters such a denial is the liar. Furthermore, he is the “antichrist.” That is, he is motivated by the antichrist’s spirit which is at work in the present age. The denial is further explained as a repudiation of both the Father and the Son. It is not possible to reject Christ without rejecting God.

     On the other hand, the one who acknowledges the truth concerning the person of Christ has the Father also. He who has entered the saving relationship of fellowship with God has confessed the ruth of the incarnation: Jesus Christ is God’s Son come in human flesh. The one who denies this central truth thereby reveals he has no such saving relationship.

     Our mentor outlines the three facts that are true of the person whose profession of saving fellowship is genuine. To begin with, the truth will remain in the believer, v. 24. Then, the anointing of the Holy Spirit indwells the believer, v. 27, and then, the believer continues in vital relationship with Christ, v. 24b, 27-28. Which again reminds us of John Stott’s wisdom, “Endurance is the half-mark of the saved.”

     John’s concern for his audience in the face of the Gnostic threat was that they cling to the wonderful message of the gospel not surrendering its precious reality nor compromise its purity in any way (Burdick). In our day maybe the key concern would be in the form of compromise. The intimate, saving relationship which John describes as fellowship with God is only possible for the one who possesses the truth of the gospel. Anyone who profess to have eternal life can be put to the test to see if his profession is valid. Will he hold to the truth that Jesus is the Christ, God the Son come in human flesh. Will he walk in the light of Christ which includes obedience, confession of sin, and love for God’s people. If Jesu was not God in human flesh, His death has no more saving value than that of any other good man. Our purpose for remaining in Christ is namely that when He returns, “we may have confidence and not be ashamed.”

     So, what has John given us here? The legitimacy of personal salvation has to pass a series of three tests in the midst of ordinary culture; the truth about Christ, the way we live, and love for fellow believers. Know this, over time the spirit of antichrist will show up in a variety of ways. Antichrist will often be the spirit of the day until Christ returns as judge. In the end whether in the metaphor of the sheep and goats or fish, there will be a sorting in the end so that perseverance is crucial.

     Realize this God has chosen to equip believers with the Holy Spirit and discernment by the Holy Spirit is essential for spiritual knowledge. Human knowledge apart from God is limited knowledge spiritually. We will not come to the truth apart from the Holy Spirit’s enabling.

     John’s environment included the early development of Gnosticism, but in fact, any error in the central tenants of the Christian faith is evidence of the lack of fellowship with God and therefore is proclaimed by a non-Christian. The role of the creeds has been to clarify truth.