Little children, it is [the] last hour, and, according as ye have heard that antichrist comes, even now there have come many antichrists, whence we know that it is [the] last hour.
John writes to the youngest believers with solemn news. The clock has run down to its final hour, and the proof is not one great enemy but many. Two questions follow. What does "hour" mean here? And how can an hour announced so long ago still be running?
In this verse "little children" translates a different word from the one used earlier in the chapter.
This letter uses two words that are both translated "little children." The one in 1 John 2:12 and 28 is simply "children." It takes in all believers, since all are children of God. The other, used in 1 John 2:13 and 18, is really "babes," the beginners in the Christian life. These are the ones told that it is "the last hour." That is, it is the last epoch, and in its last days the Antichrist will appear. So already men of antichristian character were at work.
Beginners get the hardest news first, and one writer notes how strange that seems to us.
"Little children, it is the last hour." How this must have sounded in their souls and made them wonder! Many think that such truth is not at all the right food for babes. It is much to be wished that Christians would read their Bible, and not only read but in all simple confidence believe it.
John's own usage elsewhere sets the sense of the word.
With John an hour is a period of time marked by a certain event, which may be good or evil. In the gospel he speaks of the hour of life-giving (John 5:25), of resurrection (5:28), and of the hour that had come for His glorification (12:23). Here he says it is the last hour. Nothing more was left to wait for except the coming of Christ. The evil had now fully developed, and the antichrists were present.
Some read the phrase as naming the age of grace. One writer disagrees.
Many think that this refers to grace as the last dispensation, but this does not fit the context here. John uses the word "hour" as a period marked by one thing... It is not the outflow of grace but the coming of many antichrists.
Centuries have passed and the hour has not closed. Why?
Yes, it is a "last hour" — a very long hour, no doubt. The reason is not delay but the long-suffering of God. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Grace has some more souls to save and bless, some more to make members of Christ's body; and therefore God waits. But from the apostle's day it is the "last hour."
What makes it final is that no further stage of God's working is left to come.
But it is the last hour, because the power of evil has come in. When Christ was here, and was rejected, the power of evil was in the world. Then, when God raised up the church by the presence of the Holy Spirit, while Christ was on high... there came power of redemption into the middle of Satan's world. That was not the last hour. But now antichrists had come in. So he says, "this is the last hour," because even this had failed. Nothing will come after this but judgment.
One writer describes how this opposition works.
No evil is as blatant as antichrist. It is direct, personal opposition to the Lord. He may imitate the Lord Jesus in order to oppose Him. He may claim what belongs only to God in order to exalt himself and deny God.
The verse also holds two things apart: one figure still to come, and many already here.
The Greek name antichristos means an opposer of Christ. Only John uses it, in his first and second letters. It is important to tell the difference between an antichrist and the antichrist. John says, "as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come." But he also says, "This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son" (1 John 2:18, 22). He is what all the many antichrists lead up to.
What marks an antichrist is not general wickedness but a specific rejection.
The "many antichrists" who have preceded him all run on similar lines. Their denials are aimed mainly at the Son, who appeared on earth. They may claim that they have nothing to say about the Father, or against Him. Such a claim is useless. To deny the Son is to deny the Father. To confess the Son is to have the Father also.
John does not leave the warning hanging. He points beginners to a refuge.
Evil is ripening, and the spirit of falsehood is spreading. The sure refuge of the babes is that what they heard from the beginning should stay in them. Then they will remain in the true fellowship, in the Son and in the Father. They will not be deceived by anyone speaking of the "universal fatherhood" of God, or anything of the kind.
- Hour. For John an hour is a stretch of time marked by one event. This one is marked by antichrists, not by the spread of the gospel.
- Sign. The many antichrists are the evidence. They imitate Christ in order to oppose Him, and the Antichrist to come is their full flowering.
- Patience. The hour has run long because God is not slow but long-suffering, still saving souls before the end.
- Test. The dividing line is the Son: deny Him and the Father is gone with Him; confess Him and you have the Father too.
- Safeguard. Beginners are not told to become clever, but to let what they heard at the start stay in them.
They went out from among us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have surely remained with us, but that they might be made manifest that none are of us.
John writes to believers shaken by men who once sat among them and now stand against Christ. This verse explains why they left. Their going out was not a loss to the church. It was an exposure, and it shows what marks a person as one of God's own.
The people John describes were not outsiders. They left a place they once held.
Remember that the very worst of them, the antichrists, had once had their place in the church. While an apostle was alive, people recognised them as part of the family of God.
Their leaving did not change their standing. It displayed it.
By this act they made it clear that they never really belonged to the family of God — they were not "of us." The true believer is marked by holding fast the faith. They had abandoned it and gone out from the Christian company, showing in that way that they had no vital connection with the children of God.
Older versions end the verse with "they were not all of us." That wording sounds as if some of those who left were genuine. Kelly pushes the grammar the other way.
This is a very strange and incorrect rendering: "they were not all of us." It really has no proper meaning at all… The Greek text actually says "they all were not of us." In plain English that means "none of them were of us." But if you say, "they were not all of us," it would imply that some were. Some of these antichrists were of us! The apostle expressly contradicts this.
Believers can fail and shrink from the cost of standing with a faithful servant of God. Grant separates that weakness from what John describes here.
The case in 2 Timothy 1:15 is far removed from this. There Paul writes, "You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me." That does not mean they rejected the ministry John gave about the eternal Deity and perfect Manhood of the Lord Jesus. It means they were unwilling to be identified with Paul in suffering for the truth about the church of God and its separation from unrighteousness. Even true believers had apparently turned away from Paul in this way, as Demas had deserted him when the pressure of persecution threatened. This is pathetic weakness, but not the spirit of antichrist, of which John speaks. "They went out from us" refers to a cold, deliberate refusal of what they had once acknowledged in public. All that remained in them was a callous contempt for the blessed personal glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jude writes about ungodly men too. They moved the opposite way, and the contrast sharpens what John means by "went out."
The ungodly men John speaks of "went out," whereas the ungodly Jude writes about "crept in." The difference in result is very great. If ungodly men "go out," they become opposers of the truth outside the Christian circle. If the ungodly creep in, they become corrupters of the truth inside the Christian circle. To oppose the truth is indeed serious; to corrupt it is far worse.
The test is not only about the past. It reaches every reader.
The parable of the sower shows the same thing. Of the four parts that appear to receive the truth, only one receives it in a prepared heart and, understanding it, bears fruit. It is not the agreement of the mind, but the reception of Christ in the heart by faith. Have you received Christ in this way? If you have, you will certainly continue; if you have not, you will sooner or later fall away.
- Among, not of. The people who left had a recognised place in the Christian company. They never belonged to it. The whole verse turns on two words: "of us."
- Going out exposed. Their leaving made nothing new. It showed what was already true: no living link with the children of God.
- All, not some. The Greek means none of them were of us. Not one was genuine. The exposure covers every one who went out.
- Failure is not defiance. Demas turned away under pressure, and that is sad failure. This verse describes something colder: a deliberate refusal of the Christ they had once acknowledged.
- Two dangers, one test. Some go out and oppose the truth. Others creep in and corrupt it. One test settles both: has the heart received Christ? Whoever has received Him will continue.
And *ye* have [the] unction from the holy [one], and ye know all things.
Teachers who once belonged to this circle had walked out, and they kept pressing their teaching on the believers. John does not hand them arguments; he points to what they already have. (Quotes below that read "an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things" follow an older translation of this verse.)
The word behind "anointed" points back to an Old Testament practice.
The word translated "unction" here is the same word translated "anointing" in verse 27. In the Old Testament, priests and kings were anointed with oil, and in one case at least a prophet. Each of these involves a place of dignity as representing God in some way. The anointing pictures the giving of the Spirit of God as necessary to equip the individual for his holy and responsible position. The anointing involves the wonderful capacity the Spirit of God gives to every renewed soul, for receiving and understanding the truth of the Word of God.
The wording itself rules out one obvious reading, since the anointing is said to come from someone.
Attention to the exact language used will at once show that the "Holy One" in verse 20 cannot be the Holy Spirit. It is an unction "from the Holy One." Every believer knows that the Spirit of God is Himself the anointing. So we could not say, as verse 27 does, that we received it from Him. The "Holy One" must therefore mean either the Father or Christ. John's Gospel tells us that both the Father and the Son send the Comforter.
Notice who John comforts here.
How striking that he comforts the least mature part of the family, and not the whole family! He assures them that they have the great distinctive privilege Christ went on high to send down, to be in and with them. They wait for His coming, and all the power of the world and the schemes of Satan stand against them. If the babes have an unction from the Holy One, as he says, and by His indwelling energy can be said to know all things, how could it be denied to the young men and the fathers in the household of faith?
The phrase does not mean a young believer has nothing left to learn. The difference is between capacity and content.
The word for know is the one meaning inward, conscious knowledge. If it is a question of acquired knowledge, there are ten thousand details of which the babe is at present ignorant, but the Anointing gives him that inward capacity which brings all things within his reach. He knows all things potentially, though not yet in detail.
This capacity shows first in what it refuses. A believer may not be able to answer a false teacher, and yet not be fooled by him.
The antichristian teachers had left the Christian circle, but they still tried to influence the saints of God with their harmful teaching. Not every child of God was able to refute that teaching. Yet every one had the ability to know the teaching was false, for, says the apostle, "you have an unction from the Holy One, and you know all things." They had the Holy Spirit, so they had a capacity for entering into all the truth, but they had the ability to discern all that was not the truth.
The anointing does not stand alone. John pairs it with the truth they had held from the start.
Two things kept them safe from deceivers and deceptions. One was the Holy Spirit living in them as an unction and spiritual intelligence. The other was the truth they had received at the beginning — the perfect revelation of Christ. If the unction of the Holy One is in us to judge them, we will find that all heresy, all error and all corruption strike at that first and divine revelation of the truth.
So are teachers of no use? One writer draws a careful line.
The Lord has gifted some as teachers, and He uses them; but you do not depend on them completely. Believing that teachers are essential is where many dear children of God go wrong, and why they make no more progress in divine things. They lean on their minister, or their teacher, on this man's commentary or that man's book. I am thankful to be taught anything of God through any person or channel He pleases. Notice, through, but not from, any person. The distinction is obvious.
- Cause — Teachers had left the circle but kept pushing their teaching; this verse is John's answer.
- Gift — The anointing is the Spirit Himself, the same word as in verse 27, received from the Holy One — the Father or Christ.
- Reach — God gives it to the babes, not only to the mature; if they have it, the fathers surely do too.
- Result — "Knowing all things" is capacity, not a catalogue. The babe knows all things potentially, and can spot what is not the truth even when he cannot argue against it.
- Test — The anointing works alongside the truth heard at the beginning. Teachers still help, but truth comes through them, never from them.
I have not written to you because ye do not know the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
John has just warned about many antichrists. That warning could shake the youngest believers, so he stops to say why he wrote. It was not because they lack the truth. It was because they already have it, and because a lie can never belong to the truth.
John's warning is aimed at the least experienced believers. He starts by reminding them what grace has already given them.
Verses 20, 21. It is moving to see the way John goes about sheltering the babes in the faith from the danger of the seducers. Their weak condition called for this help. But in giving it, John's first care is to remind them of what they are through grace: You have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, you know the truth.
Strong words about deceivers can make young believers wonder if John means them. John removes that fear.
In verse 21 the apostle writes strongly about these antichrists. He assures the inexperienced babe that this is not because he suspects them of being such. He sets them fully at ease and states his confidence in them without reserve. The babes, inexperienced as they may be, are in the light, and the light is in them. They know the truth. They have it as from God. They live in the reality of their link with God, holding and enjoying it through what they had heard from the beginning — the truth... It is not that babes have taken in the full range of God's thoughts, or fully understood the counsels of His will, or grasped the purposes He has revealed. But the knowledge of God is in their souls. By this knowledge, whatever their measure of it, they sense that no lie is of the truth.
This knowing is not a matter of education or years.
"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" (1 John 2:21). Is that not very striking? It is a remarkable word. There is a divine competency by the Spirit of God, even in the heart of the youngest saint, to detect what is of God and what is not of God. The Spirit of God, of course, is that divine and blessed competency.
One false claim can expose the whole system it belongs to. So the teaching to watch is the one that offers itself as an advance on Christ.
How full of cheer and comfort! The teaching of tradition is always vague. It leaves the soul uncertain even about what we most need — assurance, so that we may have settled peace with God. But where believers have simply received Christ and fully enjoy Him, the claim to new truth opens the door to the evil one; and he soon appears. This is a signal for the babes to beware. No lie is of the truth. Since the truth is a consistent whole, one obvious lie may betray the falsehood of the entire system. And God makes this known even to the babes.
If the truth is already yours, investigating every rival claim is not the path to safety.
This is a great safeguard for the saints when errors in attractive disguises are on the move. If we have the truth we may well be satisfied, and we do not need to examine everything else that claims to be a truth. The Lord would spare us both the defilement and the trouble... We can make no greater mistake, when we know we have the truth, than to examine an error which claims to replace what we already have. Teachers may have a duty to do this, to expose the tricks of Satan. But it is enough for the "babes" to rest in the certainty of the truth itself, and in the knowledge that no lie is of the truth.
The context here is teaching about Christ, and only two verdicts are open.
Any lie puts things out of right proportion and is therefore not of the truth. This is true in general, but the context here has to do with any teaching about Christ. We are in the habit of calling doctrines either truth or error. This passage would suggest that we should be bolder – is it truth, or is it a lie?
Writers applying this verse elsewhere reach the same conclusion about what protects a believer under pressure.
The knowledge of the truth is the appointed safeguard against every lie (1 John 2:21), and the only effective one.
- Anointing — this knowledge is not earned by study. It comes from the Spirit, given to every believer, even the youngest.
- Assurance — John writes with confidence in his readers, not suspicion. They already stand in the light.
- Instinct — even a small grasp of the truth is enough to sense that a lie does not belong to it.
- Refusal — the truth is one whole, so one clear lie condemns the whole system. You need not examine what claims to replace what you have.
- Verdict — there is no middle ground between truth and a lie. Of any teaching about Christ, ask: is it truth, or is it a lie?
Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? *He* is the antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.
John is writing about people who once confessed Christ and now deny Him. This verse names the lie they carry — and it names two denials, not one.
This is sharper than a general complaint about dishonesty. John does not say "a liar." He says "the liar" — and he has one kind of person in mind.
"Who is the liar?" says the indignant apostle. "Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" One way or another, they undermined and destroyed His person. How terrible that people who once confessed Him now count such a lie as new and great truth! For "the liar" here is not Satan. It is someone who once passed as a Christian. They now deny that Jesus is the Christ.
The verse names two refusals, and they belong to two different settings.
Here we learn that there are two steps. First comes the denial of the Jewish confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. That is the fatal unbelief of that nation. Then comes the denial of the Father and the Son. That is the equally fatal rejection of the Christian confession. The antichrist will be the chief outcome of this double blasphemous unbelief, this spirit of falling away, found not only among the Jews but in Christendom. He will be the head of both. That unbelieving Jews and Christians can and will have one common head is enough to show how complete the falling away must be.
The denial is not that a Christ exists at all. It is more targeted than that.
So the antichrist completely denies the Christian revelation. He does not deny the Jewish hope; he claims to fulfil it. He does not say there is no Christ; he says that Jesus is not the Christ. In both ways he is the head of Jewish unbelief.
The second denial goes further than the first. It throws away truth the Jewish nation never had.
The word antichrist assumes that more truth has been given up than the Jews ever knew. In a general way even a Jew who heard of the Lord Jesus and rejected Him might be "the liar." The Law, the Psalms and the Prophets all pointed to Jesus. But the Jew would not have a Messiah who suffered for sins on the cross instead of setting up His world-kingdom. He preferred what the devil offered — the very thing the Messiah refused.
The two titles do not carry the same weight.
Jesus was the Messiah, and much more: the Father was displayed in Him. If I look at the Messiah as such, I do not fully see the Father there. But there is something far more blessed than the kingdom. When I think of the Father, I rise not merely into the region of divine power, but into that of the highest, holiest and most intimate affections. So it is not merely the rejection of the Lord Jesus as Messiah that brings in antichrist, but the rejection of His divine glory as the Son.
An imitation only works where there is something real to imitate. That is why this evil grows among people who profess Christ, not outside them.
There could not be an antichrist unless there had been some earlier profession of Christ. There must be some truth there, because Satan cannot invent. He can imitate. He can corrupt God's truth, use it for his own ends, and put it into new and evil forms, so that plain error looks like truth.
That leaves one test for any teaching you meet.
We can be fooled if we judge such systems by the Christian words they use and the way they behave. The real test is this: where do they stand on the truth about the Person of Christ? You will find that every false system denies the truth of His Person in some form. And denial of the truth of the Son will lead to denial of the truth about the Father.
The open denials of John's day have not disappeared, but they have learned to travel by quieter routes.
In the Apostle's day he aimed at the centre openly. The antichrists boldly denied that Jesus was the Christ: they denied the Father and the Son. In our day some of them are still doing this. Many more however hardly do this; they introduce teachings of a more subtle kind, not so harmful on the surface but ultimately leading to just the same denials, whereby the centre of the target is hit.
- One target. Every lie aims at the Person of Christ. Deny that Jesus is the Christ, and you are not one liar among many — you are the liar.
- Two denials. The first throws away the Jewish hope. The second throws away the Christian truth of the Father and the Son. Both aim at the same Person.
- One head. In the antichrist the two denials merge. Unbelieving Jews and unbelieving Christendom will share one leader.
- Inside, not outside. There could be no antichrist without an earlier profession of Christ. Satan cannot invent. He can only imitate and corrupt.
- One test. Judge no system by its Christian words or clean conduct — ask only where it stands on the Person of Christ.