Antichrists and the Anointing

Scripture: 1 John 2:18–27

Read 1 John 2:18–27 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.
1 John 2:20

Children, It Is the Last Hour

Having addressed his readers with pastoral encouragement and warned them against the love of the world, John now turns directly to the crisis that has prompted the letter. 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. 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.

Here, in a few dense verses, John names the situation. False teachers have arisen from within his congregations. They have taught a distorted view of Christ. They have drawn some members after them. And they have now departed, taking their followers with them, leaving behind congregations that are wounded, shaken, and asking hard questions. Who were the people who left? Were they ever really Christians? If they claimed the same faith for years and now deny it, what does that mean for our own faith? How can we know we will not drift as they drifted? These are the questions John’s readers are asking, and they are the questions John’s letter is designed to answer.

John’s word for the situation is stark. It is the last hour, and these are antichrists. The language may startle modern readers whose only association with the word antichrist is with end-times speculation about a single future figure. We will see that this popular reading, while not entirely without scriptural basis in other passages, is not what John primarily means. For John, antichrist is not first of all a single figure at the close of history; it is a spirit, a teaching, a pattern of denial that has already appeared in his own day in the form of these false teachers. And the presence of such antichrist-figures is itself the sign that the last hour has arrived.

In this session we will walk through John’s treatment of the crisis. We will examine what he means by the last hour and by antichrist. We will look at his pastoral observation that those who left were not of us, what that does and does not mean, and what it means for Christian assurance. We will see John’s stark definition of the antichrist spirit as the denial that Jesus is the Christ. We will reach the beautiful passage on the anointing that the Christians have from the Holy One, an anointing that teaches them and keeps them in the truth. And we will close with John’s exhortation to let what they heard from the beginning abide in them, so that they may abide in the Son and in the Father.

The Last Hour

The phrase the last hour is striking. In the Gospel of John, the hour often means the appointed time of Christ’s suffering and glorification. The hour is coming, Jesus says repeatedly, and the phrase refers to the specific moment of His Passion. Here in the letter, John’s phrase shifts slightly. It is the last hour. The closing phase of history. The final period. The end-time in which John and his readers are living.

This is the same New Testament framework we saw in Peter: the last days have begun with the coming of Christ and will continue until His return. What is strange to modern readers is that John, writing near the end of the first century, would speak of his time as the last hour. Two thousand years have now passed, and the last hour evidently stretches much longer than the English phrase might suggest. But the New Testament frame is consistent. The hour is not the final sixty-minute period before the consummation; it is the whole era between Christ’s first and second coming. That era is characterized by a particular kind of spiritual reality, including, as John will now say, the presence of antichrist-figures.

How Do We Know It Is the Last Hour?

John’s answer is surprising. We know it is the last hour because these antichrists have appeared. The appearance of such teachers is itself a sign, not that the end is measurable in days or years, but that the last era has genuinely begun, with its characteristic spiritual conflict. Where orthodoxy is opposed by counterfeits rising within the Christian community itself, where the person of Christ becomes the specific point of attack, where those who seemed to be of the Church depart from it teaching distorted doctrine. This pattern is one of the marks of the last hour.

This has been the pattern across Christian history. In every age since John’s day, false teachings about Christ have arisen: sometimes from outside the Church, more often from within. Gnostic distortions in the second and third centuries. Arian denials of the Son’s full deity in the fourth. Medieval superstitions that obscured justification by grace. Enlightenment rationalisms that dissolved the supernatural. Modernist denials of the incarnation, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection. And in our own day, the many ways Jesus is reimagined as moral teacher, cultural hero, mystical symbol, or anything other than the crucified and risen Lord the apostles proclaimed. Not every one of these errors is antichrist in John’s precise sense, which centers on denying or distorting the incarnate Christ. But every denial of the Son who came in the flesh is exactly that, and the long pattern of counterfeits confirms John’s point. The last hour is not the final sixty minutes; it is the long struggle of the Church against counterfeits, and that struggle has been continuous since John’s day.

They Went Out from Us

John now explains what has happened in his own congregations. 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.

The pastoral weight of this sentence is enormous, and it requires careful handling. People who had been members of John’s congregations (who had gathered for worship, received the teaching, joined in the sacraments, lived as part of the Christian community) have now departed and joined the false teachers. The question that naturally arises in the minds of those who remain is: were they really Christians? Did they fall away from a real faith? And if they could do so, could we? John answers with a settled statement. They went out from us, but they were not of us.

The Distinction Between With and Of

The distinction John draws is between being with us and being of us. These teachers had shared the congregation’s outward fellowship: visibly present, formally associated, participating in its life. But they did not remain in the apostolic confession. Their departure manifested their present alienation from the apostolic fellowship and showed that they were not of us in the decisive sense John is addressing. If they had been of us, John says, they would have remained. Their going out made plain what had not been visible before.

This verse should not be turned into a universal claim that everyone who falls away was never born of God. Scripture elsewhere teaches that some who have truly believed do fall away. Some “believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away” (Luke 8:13). Some have “made shipwreck of their faith” (1 Timothy 1:19). Some who sought to be justified by the law have “fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4). The Augsburg Confession explicitly rejects the teaching that those once justified cannot lose the Holy Spirit (AC XII.7), and the Smalcald Articles warn that where sin is given free rein, faith and the Holy Spirit are not present (SA III.iii.43–45). John’s point here is not to expose the hidden spiritual history of every apostate. It is to distinguish antichrist secession from abiding in the apostolic doctrine.

This touches a distinction the Lutheran Confessions draw carefully. The Church properly speaking is the assembly of saints who truly believe the Gospel and have the Holy Spirit. Mingled with them in this life, sharing the outward fellowship of Word, profession, and sacraments, are hypocrites and evil persons who do not share the faith of the Church properly called (AC VII–VIII; Ap VII/VIII). The two overlap substantially but not perfectly, and God alone sees the line between them. Some who share the outward fellowship do not belong to the Church properly called, and a departure like the one John describes can bring to light what was not visible before. At the same time, neither this text nor the Church’s confession permits us to say that everyone who falls from faith was never regenerate.

What This Does and Does Not Say

It is crucial to handle this passage carefully, because it can be misread in ways that do real harm. What John is saying is that those particular people, the ones who had now left and taken up the false teaching, were not of the community in the decisive sense: they did not abide in the apostolic confession. What John is not saying is that anyone who ever struggles with doubt, who ever goes through a season of weakness, who ever wrestles with faith, is therefore revealed to have never been a Christian at all. The New Testament has many examples of genuine Christians who struggle through dark seasons and return. Peter denied the Lord three times and was restored. The disciples all fled at the crucifixion and came back. John’s statement is specific to those who have decisively and finally departed from the apostolic faith, adopting instead a teaching that denies the Christ the apostles proclaimed.

This distinction matters pastorally. Christians who go through difficult seasons should not read this passage as evidence that their struggles disqualify them. The mark of not being of us is not occasional doubt or periodic weakness; it is the final and decisive adoption of a teaching that denies Christ. The one who falls into doubt, weakness, denial, or grievous sin and is brought back through repentance should not be pronounced a false Christian; the Church absolves those who return (AC XII.1–3, 9), as Christ Himself restored Peter. The one who persists in denying the incarnate Son stands under the warning of final unbelief. This passage distinguishes antichrist departure from abiding in the apostolic doctrine; it does not authorize us to declare what such a person’s former condition was before God. Reading the text with this care avoids the despair it should not produce and preserves the seriousness it should.

And What About Assurance?

For those who remain, the passage is intended to strengthen rather than unsettle. The fact that some have left does not mean the community itself is unsettled. The remaining members have been preserved by the same Lord who will continue to preserve them. The ones who departed have revealed themselves; the ones who remain are showing, by their remaining, that they are among those of us. The next verses will confirm this explicitly. The anointing they have, the word they have heard from the beginning, the truth they know; all of these are their possession, given by the One who is faithful.

This is what John intends to do with this section: not to raise fears about whether any of his readers might be secret antichrists, but to stabilize them in what they have received. The antichrist-figures have declared themselves by their departure. The Christian who remains in the apostolic faith, who continues in the fellowship, who keeps confessing the Christ John proclaims, has every reason for confidence. The departure of the others does not undermine the assurance of the faithful; it confirms it.

The Mark of the Antichrist

John now defines what makes someone an antichrist. 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. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

The test is theological, specific, and unambiguous. The mark of the antichrist is the denial that Jesus is the Christ. That is, the denial that the man Jesus of Nazareth (the one the apostles had heard, seen, and touched) is the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the eternal Word who has come in the flesh. The false teachers John is addressing were denying this. They taught, in various forms, that the divine Christ was distinct from the human Jesus: that the Christ only visited Jesus temporarily, or that the physical body of Jesus was not truly the body of the divine Son, or some other version of separating the human and the divine in the person of the Savior. John rejects all of this. Jesus is the Christ. The one crucified under Pontius Pilate is the one who was from the beginning. There is no divine Christ apart from the human Jesus. The two are one, and to deny this is to deny the entire Gospel.

Denying the Son Is Denying the Father

John draws a consequence that is equally unambiguous. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. This is a strong statement, and it has been important across Christian history. Some people in every age have wanted to claim knowledge of God apart from Christ: to reach the Father by some route that bypasses the Son. John rules this out. Christ is not an optional middle step that some people need and others can skip. He is the Son through whom the Father is known, and there is no knowledge of the Father that does not come through Him.

This has pastoral consequences for Christian conversation with those outside the faith. When someone claims to know God while rejecting Christ, John’s teaching is that this is not possible. Whatever that person may be experiencing, whatever religious sentiment or spiritual intuition she may have, she does not know the Father apart from the Son. The Christian does not need to pretend otherwise, but also does not need to argue aggressively. The Christian speaks the truth, that the Father is known only through the Son, with the gentleness and respect Peter called for, trusting that the Spirit who gives faith can reach any heart He chooses, in His own time.

Who Confesses the Son

The positive side is warm. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. The confession is not abstract assent to a proposition; it is the active acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as Lord, heard in Baptism and rearticulated in ordinary Christian confession whenever the faith is named. The one who confesses the Son (who acknowledges Him, speaks His name, embraces Him as the Christ) has the Father. The Father and the Son are received together. There is no partial acquisition. The confession of the Son opens the full reality of the Triune God, because the Son Himself is the way to the Father and the sending of the Spirit follows from the Son’s work.

Let What You Heard Abide

Having exposed the antichrist pattern, John now turns to what his readers must do. 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. And this is the promise that He made to us: eternal life.

The counsel is simple, and it is crucial. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. The apostolic teaching that reached them at the beginning of their Christian life, the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the apostles proclaimed Him, is to remain in them, not to be displaced by the supposedly advanced teaching of the antichrists. The false teachers had apparently claimed to be offering something deeper, higher, more spiritually mature than the basic Gospel John and the other apostles had preached. John’s answer is the opposite. Do not advance beyond what you heard at the beginning. Let that abide. Do not trade the Christ the apostles preached for a supposedly more sophisticated Christ the teachers are now offering.

Abiding

The word abide, meno in Greek, is one of John’s favorites. It appears about seventy times in his writings, taking a central place in both the Gospel and the letters. To abide is to remain, to continue in, to dwell, to make one’s settled home in something. In John’s Gospel, Jesus tells His disciples to abide in Him as the branches abide in the vine. Here in the letter, John tells his readers to let the apostolic teaching abide in them, so that they may abide in the Son and in the Father. The language is familial, relational, and settled. It is not the language of feverish activity; it is the language of continued dwelling.

This is important pastorally. John is not telling his readers to engage in some new program of spiritual advancement, to chase after new experiences, to discover new teachings beyond what they have received. He is telling them to stay where they are. The Gospel they heard at the beginning is the Gospel they need now. The Christ the apostles preached to them is the Christ in whom they are to continue. The abiding is the active maintenance of a relationship they already have, not the acquisition of something new. And this abiding, John says, brings them into the deeper abiding: abiding in the Son and in the Father, who are known through the teaching that was given at the beginning.

Eternal Life

And John gives the promise. This is the promise that He made to us: eternal life. For John, eternal life is not primarily a future possession to be received someday. It is a present reality in Christ, shared with the Son and the Father through faith and made manifest in the ongoing abiding. The one who abides in the teaching has eternal life now, because the life is Christ and abiding in Christ is abiding in eternal life. This reality will come to its consummation at His return, but it is not reserved for that future moment. It is the current possession of those who are dwelling in what they heard from the beginning.

This connects directly to the purpose verse at 5:13 that anchors our whole study. John writes so that his readers may know they have eternal life. The eternal life is already theirs. They do not need to earn it, achieve it, or wait for it. It is present to them as their possession, because they are in the Son who is the life. And their assurance of this possession grows as they continue to abide in what they heard from the beginning, not chasing after new teachings but settling more deeply into what they have already been given.

The Anointing from the Holy One

John now introduces one of the richest images in the letter. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 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.

The anointing John is describing refers to the gift of the Holy Spirit that the Christian has received through Baptism and the Word. The language of anointing is rich with Old Testament background. Kings were anointed, and priests, and prophets, set apart by the pouring of oil as a sign of being commissioned and empowered for their calling. Christ Himself is the Anointed One, the Messiah, whose name means the anointed. And those who are in Christ share in His anointing: they have been anointed by the Holy One, meaning they have received the Spirit whom the Father sent through the Son.

You All Have Knowledge

The consequence is remarkable. And you all have knowledge. Every member of the congregation has knowledge, because every member has received the anointing. This is striking against the background of the false teachers’ claim. The antichrists had taught that real spiritual knowledge was available only to some, only to an elite group that had received the higher teaching, only to initiates into the mysteries the teachers claimed to possess. John cuts directly against this. All of you have knowledge. The Spirit given in Baptism gives every baptized Christian the basic knowledge of Christ that is needed. There is no inner elite of specially enlightened Christians, separate from and superior to the ordinary believer. Every Christian, by virtue of the Spirit given to her, knows the truth.

This does not mean every Christian knows everything, or knows as deeply as some others, or has equivalent pastoral gifts or theological training. It means the basic knowledge of Christ (the knowledge that identifies Him rightly, receives Him as Lord, and abides in Him) is the common possession of all who have the Spirit. The Sunday school teacher, the plumber, the widow, the college student, the mother at home, the retired farmer; each of these has received the same anointing, knows the same Christ, has the same Spirit speaking to him or her through Word and Sacrament. No priesthood, no academic degree, no spiritual technique is required to acquire what the Spirit gives freely in Baptism to every member of the Church.

Not Because You Do Not Know

John is careful to clarify his purpose. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. John is not offering them new information they lack. He is reinforcing what they already possess. The letter is written to strengthen what the anointing has already given, to help them stand firm in the truth they already know, to remind them of what is already theirs. This is the proper posture of faithful Christian teaching. The teacher does not stand above the hearers as the possessor of knowledge they lack. The teacher serves what the hearers have been given by the Spirit: drawing it out, clarifying it, deepening it, helping it come to fuller articulation. Teacher and hearers share the same anointing. The teacher has a specific calling within the body, but the knowledge itself is common to all.

This is a liberating word for Christians who have sometimes been made to feel that their faith is incomplete because they do not have theological training, cannot answer every apologetic challenge, or have not read the right books. John says the knowledge is already yours. The Spirit has given it to you in Baptism. You may not be able to articulate it in technical language. You may not be able to defend it against every clever attack. But you have it. It is yours. And the letter John is writing is not adding to what you have; it is reinforcing it.

No Lie Is of the Truth

John adds a sharp observation. No lie is of the truth. The false teaching is not a different version of the truth or a higher form of the truth. It is a lie, and lies do not come from the truth. The distinction between truth and falsehood is absolute. There is no continuum where the antichrist teaching is somehow an advanced form of the apostolic teaching. They are opposed realities, and the Spirit who has given the Christian the anointing enables the Christian to recognize the distinction.

The Anointing That Teaches You

John now draws out the implications of the anointing more fully. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. 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.

This is one of the more remarkable statements in the letter, and it needs careful reading to be understood rightly. The anointing you received abides in you. You have no need that anyone should teach you. His anointing teaches you about everything. These phrases, taken out of context, have sometimes been used to argue that Christians do not need pastors, teachers, or any formal instruction in the faith: that the Spirit teaches each Christian directly, apart from external means, and that all Christian teaching is ultimately unnecessary. This reading has been used across history to justify various forms of individualistic spirituality that reject the ordinary teaching office of the Church.

What John Is Not Saying

This reading, however, contradicts John’s own practice in the very moment of the letter. John is, after all, writing to teach. He is giving instruction, correction, and direction. He is an apostle in the act of pastoring a congregation through a crisis. If John really meant that Christians do not need teachers at all, he would be acting against his own teaching in the very words he is writing. His statement must mean something that is consistent with his apostolic teaching ministry, not something that cancels it.

What John means, consistent with the context, is that his readers do not need the teaching of the antichrists. They do not need what the false teachers are claiming to offer them. They do not need new revelations beyond what the apostles have delivered. They do not need to be initiated into supposedly higher mysteries. The anointing they have, the Spirit given in Baptism, is sufficient to confirm them in what they have already heard from the beginning. They have no need of those teachers who are trying to deceive them. They have the Spirit who keeps them in the truth.

The Anointing and the Word

For Lutherans, this passage fits within the broader framework of the Spirit working through the Word. The Spirit is not a free-floating presence who teaches Christians through private revelation apart from the Scriptures and the ministry of the Church. The Spirit is the one who gives, preserves, and illumines the Word. The anointing that teaches the Christian is the Spirit working through the apostolic teaching that the Christian has received. When John says the anointing teaches you about everything, he does not mean the Spirit gives a Christian new content apart from the apostolic witness. He means the Spirit illumines that witness and enables the Christian to recognize the truth of what he has been given and the falsity of what the antichrists are now offering.

This matches what John is about to do in the final verse of the section. Abide in Him. The anointing’s teaching is not separate from the relationship with Christ that the Christian is in. The anointing points the Christian back to Christ, back to the Word, back to the teaching received from the beginning. The Spirit and the Word work together. The Spirit illumines the Word He inspired. The Word anchors the Spirit’s work in the reality of who Christ is. These are never opposed, and neither is sufficient without the other in the ordinary life of the Church. The anointing the Christian has received keeps him in the Word, and the Word keeps him in the anointing.

Abide in Him

And John concludes the section with the call to abide. Just as it has taught you, abide in Him. The teaching of the anointing reaches its goal in this abiding. The Spirit has taught them, through the Word, who Christ is, and now they are to continue abiding in the Christ they have come to know. The whole movement of the passage gathers into this final exhortation. The antichrists have tried to deceive them. The anointing has taught them the truth. And the anointing’s teaching ends where it must end: in the continued abiding in Christ. Not departure. Not advancement beyond. Not chasing after the teachers who promised more. Abide in Him. The Christ you were given at the beginning is the Christ in whom you are to continue, now and always.

Gathering the Threads

John has given his readers, in this passage, the tools they need to navigate the crisis that has come upon their congregations. False teachers have arisen and departed. The faithful who remain have questions. John names the situation: it is the last hour, and these are antichrists. He explains what has happened: those who left were not of us. He defines the mark of the antichrist: the denial that Jesus is the Christ. He calls his readers to let what they heard from the beginning abide in them. And he reminds them of the anointing they have received, which teaches them about everything and keeps them in the truth.

For Christians in every age, this passage remains directly applicable. False teachings about Christ continue to arise from within the Church. Those who have been visible members of Christian communities still sometimes depart, taking up teachings that deny what the apostles proclaimed. The faithful who remain still ask whether such departures mean that any of us might drift in the same way. And the answer John gives continues to stabilize the faithful across the centuries. The anointing you received abides in you. The word you heard from the beginning is sufficient. You do not need the teachers who promise higher truths. You have the Spirit who keeps you in Christ. Abide in Him.

For the Lutheran Christian, this passage has particular resonance. The teaching that every baptized Christian has received the Spirit, and thus has knowledge of the truth through the Word, grounds the Reformation recovery of the universal priesthood of the baptized. The teaching that the anointing works through the Word, not apart from it, grounds the Lutheran confession that Scripture is the sole rule and norm of teaching. The teaching that false teachers can arise even from within the Church grounds the ongoing need for careful catechesis, faithful preaching, and pastoral oversight, not as substitutes for the Spirit’s work but as the means through which the Spirit normally works. All of these together give the ordinary Christian what he needs to stand firm in the faith, even when the culture around him and sometimes the visible church around him are being shaken by the antichrist spirit of denial. The anointing is real. The Word abides. Christ is sufficient. Antichrist teachers and crises may come and go throughout the last hour, but the Christian can stand, not in his own strength but in the Spirit’s keeping, through the Word, in the Christ he has known from the beginning.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

John uses the word antichrist in a way that differs from how the word is often used in popular end-times speculation. Based on what John actually says, who or what is an antichrist? Where do you see this pattern in our own day?
‘They went out from us, but they were not of us.’ This passage has sometimes been misused to make Christians anxious about their own standing. How should we read it pastorally, with both the seriousness John intends and the care John’s whole teaching demands?
The mark of the antichrist is denying that Jesus is the Christ. What does this denial look like in our culture today? In what ways are various forms of modern spirituality doing what John describes?
John tells his readers to let what they heard from the beginning abide in them. For you, what is ‘what you heard from the beginning’, your earliest Christian formation? How is it continuing to abide in you now?
Every Christian has received the anointing of the Spirit and therefore has knowledge of the truth. How does this teaching shape your sense of your own Christian life, even if you do not have formal theological training?
The anointing does not teach Christians apart from the Word; it illumines the Word they have been given. How have you experienced the Spirit’s work through Scripture and the teaching of the Church? Where has this been most real for you?

Looking Ahead

Next week we move into the third chapter, where John turns to the identity of Christians as children of God. He will write of the love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are. He will describe the hope of the Christian who knows that when Christ appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And he will address the hard question of how the one who is born of God relates to ongoing sin, in the passages that have generated much discussion across Christian history. The chapter is rich, and it extends the assurance theme that is the letter’s pastoral heart.

Before next session, read 1 John 2:28–3:10 at least twice. Pay particular attention to the tension between what John says in 3:6 (no one who abides in Him keeps on sinning) and what he said in 1:8 (if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves). Holding these together will be the interpretive work of next session, and it is work that rewards careful preparation.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, true Messiah come in the flesh, we thank You for the anointing of Your Spirit that You have given to every baptized believer. In a time when counterfeit teachings continue to arise, keep us abiding in what we heard from the beginning, the apostolic witness to Your person and work. Teach us by Your Spirit to recognize the truth and to refuse what is not truth. Give us ears that hear the Good Shepherd’s voice and feet that follow where He leads. Hold us in Your Word, in Your Church, and in Your own abiding presence, now and unto eternal life. Amen.