1 John 2:22

2:18-23 Every man is an antichrist, who denies the Person, or any of the offices of Christ; and in denying the Son, he denies the Father also, and has no part in his favour while he rejects his great salvation. Let this prophecy that seducers would rise in the Christian world, keep us from being seduced. The church knows not well who are its true members, and who are not, but thus true Christians were proved, and rendered more watchful and humble. True Christians are anointed ones; their names expresses this: they are anointed with grace, with gifts and spiritual privileges, by the Holy Spirit of grace. The great and most hurtful lies that the father of lies spreads in the world, usually are falsehoods and errors relating to the person of Christ. The unction from the Holy One, alone can keep us from delusions. While we judge favourably of all who trust in Christ as the Divine Saviour, and obey his word, and seek to live in union with them, let us pity and pray for those who deny the Godhead of Christ, or his atonement, and the new-creating work of the Holy Ghost. Let us protest against such antichristian doctrine, and keep from them as much as we may.

{23} Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the {r} Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. (23) He shows now plainly the false doctrine of the antichrist's, that is, that either they fight against the person of Christ, or his office, or both together and at once. They who do so, boast and brag of God in vain, for in denying the Son, the Father also is denied. (r) Is the true Messiah.

1 John 2:22 . ψεύστης , cf. n. on 1 John 1:6 . The Cerinthian distinction between Jesus and the Christ was a denial of the possibility of the Incarnation, i.e. , of the filial relation of man to God. οὐκ in dependent clause after ἀρνεῖσθαι is a common Gk. idiom, not unknown in English; cf. Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors , iv. ii. 7: “He denied you had in him no right”.

Especially may the ill accord be discerned between Divine truth and a lie, when the lie is so directly levelled against the foundations upon which the whole fabric is built, as the denying Jesus to be the Christ strikes at all. And though he that doth so, seems not only an antichrist as directing his opposition but against Christ, he really as much denieth the Father, who testified of him.

A liar (ὁ ψεύστης) Rev., correctly, "the liar." For a similar interrogative phrase see 1 John 5:5. It marks the lively feeling with which the apostle writes. By the definite article, the liar, the lie is set forth in its concrete personality: the one who impersonates all that is false, as antichrist represents every form of hostility and opposition to Christ. The denial that Jesus is the Christ is the representative falsehood. He that denies is the representative liar. He that denieth (ὁ ἀρνούμενος) The article with the participle denotes the habitual denial. Lit., the one denying, the one who habitually represents this attitude towards Christ. The words are aimed at the heresy of Cerinthus, a man of Jewish decent and educated at Alexandria. He denied the miraculous conception of Jesus, and taught that, after His baptism, the Christ descended upon Him in the form of a dove, and that He then announced the unknown Father and wrought miracles; but that, towards the end of His ministry, the Christ departed again from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and rose from the dead, while the Christ remained impassible (incapable of suffering) as a spiritual being. The Father The title the Father occurs always in its simple form in the Epistle. Never his or our Father, or the Father in heaven.

1 John 2:22 . Τίς ; who? ) Thus, who? ch. 1 John 5:5 .— ὁ ψεύστης ) ὁ has a force relative to the abstract, a lie , 1 John 2:21 ; that is, who is guilty of that lie and imposture? — ὅτι , that ) The chief truth is, that Jesus is the Christ: John 20:31 . In the Acts, Paul continually demonstrated this main point; and in his Epistles he presupposed it. John often makes mention of this main point in his Gospel, and in this and the following Epistle. From which it may be inferred that these books were not written by him altogether at the close of his life.— ὁ ἀντίχριστος , antichrist ) 1 John 2:18 . The truth respecting Jesus, that He is the Christ, that He is the Son of God and is come in the flesh, must be held in its integrity. He who denies one part respecting Jesus, does not hold both Him, in His completeness, and the Father at the same time. The spirit of antichrist, and antichrist has done and does this.— τὸν Πατέρα καὶ τὸν Υἱὸν , the Father and the Son ) that is, the Son, and therefore the Father.

Verse 22. - Who is the liar, but he that denieth, etc.? From the lie St. John passes on to the utterer of it. "Ye readily distinguish any lie from the truth. Who, then, is the liar?" "The liar" does not mean the liar κατ ἐξοχήν , as if this denial constituted the very acme of falsehood. To deny the very existence of God is surely a worse lie. Still less can we say that "the context leaves no doubt that 'the liar' is the same with 'the antichrist.'" The article ὁ ψεύστης refers to the preceding ψεῦδος , just as in 1 John 5:4, 5 ὁ νικῶν refers to the preceding νίκη . The very form of sentence is the same: τίς ἐστιν ὁ νικῶν ... εἰ μὴ ὁ κ.τ.λ. and there ὁ νικῶν cannot mean the victor, κατ ἐξοχήν , who is Christ, and not the believer. So that the Authorized Version is not so very inaccurate in rendering ὁ ψεύστης "a liar." "Who tells lies, if not he who denies (and says) that Jesus is not the Christ?" This was the great Gnostic lie to which St. John's Gospel and Epistle give the answer. The antichrist is this, he who denieth the Father and the Son. "The antichrist" here is not the great adversary, but one having similar characteristics. He denies the Messiahship of Jesus, and thus virtually denies both the Father and Son (comp. 2 Thessalonians 2:4 ). This truth St. John proceeds to restate and develop. 1 John 2:22

22. a liar—Greek, "Who is the liar?" namely, guilty of the lie just mentioned (1Jo 2:21). that Jesus is the Christ—the grand central truth. He is Antichrist—Greek, "the Antichrist"; not however here personal, but in the abstract; the ideal of Antichrist is "he that denieth the Father and the Son." To deny the latter is virtually to deny the former. Again, the truth as to the Son must be held in its integrity; to deny that Jesus is the Christ, or that He is the Son of God, or that He came in the flesh, invalidates the whole (Mt 11:27).

Who is a liar - That is, who is false; who maintains an erroneous doctrine; who is an impostor, if he is not? The object of the apostle is to specify one of the prevailing forms of error, and to show that, however plausible the arguments might be by which it was defended, it was impossible that it should be true. Their own knowledge of the nature of religion must convince them at once that this opinion was false. That denieth that Jesus is the Christ - It would seem that the apostle referred to a class who admitted that Jesus lived, but who denied that he was the true Messiah. On what grounds they did this is unknown; but to maintain this was, of course, the same as to maintain that he was an impostor. The ground taken may have been that he had not the characteristics ascribed to the Messiah in the prophets; or that he did not furnish evidence that he was sent from God; or that he was an enthusiast. Or perhaps some special form of error may be referred to, like that which is said to have been held by Corinthus, who in his doctrine separated Jesus from Christ, maintaining them to be two distinct persons. - "Doddridge." He is antichrist - (See the notes at 1 John 2:18). He has all the characteristics and attributes of antichrist; or, a doctrine which practically involves the denial of both the Father and the Son, must be that of antichrist. That denieth the Father and the Son - That denies the special truths pertaining to God the Father, and to the Son of God.

The charge here is not that they entertained incorrect views of God "as such" - as almighty, eternal, most wise, and good; but that they denied the doctrines which religion taught respecting God as Father and Son. Their opinions tended to a denial of what was revealed respecting God as a Father - not in the general sense of being the "Father" of the universe, but in the particular sense of his relation to the Son. It cannot be supposed that they denied the existence and perfections of God as such, nor that they denied that God is a "Father" in the relation which he sustains to the universe; but the meaning must be that what they held went to a practical denial of that which is special to the true God, considered as sustaining the relation of a Father to his Son Jesus Christ. Correct views of the Father could not be held without correct views of the Son; correct views of the Son could not be held without correct views of the Father. The doctrines respecting the Father and the Son were so connected that one could not be held without holding the other, and one could not be denied without denying the other. Compare the Matthew 11:27 note; John 5:23 note. No man can have just views of God the Father who has not right apprehensions of the Son. As a matter of fact in the world, people have right apprehensions of God only when they have correct views of the character of the Lord Jesus Christ.

22 . Who is a liar ] More accurately, as R.V., Who is the liar : the A.V. here again follows the earlier English Versions. But we must beware of exaggerating the article in interpretation , although it is right to translate it. It merely marks the passage from the abstract to the concrete: ‘Every lie is absolutely alien from the truth. Who then is the one who speaks lies? There are no liars if he who denies that Jesus is the Christ is not one’. The exactly parallel construction in 1 John 5:4-5 shews that ‘the liar’ here does not mean ‘the greatest liar possible’. Moreover, this would not be true. Is denying that Jesus is the Christ a greater lie than denying the existence of the Son, or of God? The abruptness of the question is startling. Throughout these verses (22–24) “clause stands by clause in stern solemnity without any connecting particles.” but he that denieth ] These Gnostic teachers, who profess to be in possession of the higher truth, are really possessed by one of the worst of lies.—For the way in which the Gnostics denied the fundamental Christian truth of the Incarnation see the Introduction, p. 19. He is Antichrist ] Better, as R.V., This is the antichrist , or The antichrist is this man: ‘this’, as in 1 John 2:25 and 1 John 1:5 , may be the predicate. The article before ‘antichrist’, almost certainly spurious in 1 John 2:18 , is certainly genuine here, 1 John 4:3 , and 2 John 1:7 .

But ‘the antichrist’ here probably does not mean the great personal rival of Christ, but the antichristian teacher who is like him and in this matter acts as his mouth-piece. that denieth the Father and the Son ] This clause is substituted for ‘that denieth that Jesus is the Christ’. By this substitution, which is quite in S. John’s manner, he leads us on to see that to deny the one is to deny the other. Jesus is the Christ, and the Christ is the Son of God; therefore to deny that Jesus is the Christ is to deny the Son. And to deny the Son is to deny the Father; not merely because Son and Father are correlatives and mutually imply one another, but because the Son is the revelation of the Father, without whom the Father cannot be known. ‘Neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him ’ ( Matthew 11:27 ). ‘No one cometh unto the Father but by Me ’ ( John 14:6 ). Comp. John 5:23 ; John 15:23 . Some would put a full stop at ‘antichrist,’ and connect what follows with 1 John 2:23 , thus; This is the antichrist. He that denieth the Father (denieth) the Son also: every one that denieth the Son hath not the Father either .