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?