For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.
John moves from love and obedience to a reason: danger is already loose in the world. His test is not conduct or sincerity. It is confession — what a teacher says about the Person of Jesus Christ.
Why the warning follows the call to walk in truth
The safeguard John gives is not suspicion but nearness to Christ. One writer says this refusal goes deeper than a wrong idea about Christ becoming man.
The Christian's FriendNothing so preserves the saints from wrong and false teachings as walking in the power of the truth. The nearer we are to Christ, the more readily we detect what is not of Him... This was not so much a denial that He became flesh, though that might be included. It was the refusal to own and bow to the claims and authority of Christ as "come in the flesh."
Deceivers who came out from inside
John says these deceivers have gone out into the world. They are not strangers arriving from outside. They once stood among Christians and then left.
William KellyThey had once been in the church, and they went out to pursue their unholy work of defying God's word and denying the Son... A man may enter the church of God and take his part in it for a while as a Christian. He goes out a great deal worse than when he came in, however bad he was. He now hates the truth, and those who hold to it. It becomes his active business to mislead the saints, defame the truth, and deny Christ.
What "come in flesh" actually claims
The phrase is carefully chosen. To come in flesh says something no ordinary human birth could say.
Hamilton SmithTo confess that Jesus Christ is come in flesh is to own that He existed before He became flesh. There would be no sense in saying of a mere human being that he is come in flesh. How else could he come? So to deny that Jesus Christ is come in flesh is to deny that He existed before. It is to deny that He is a divine Person — God.
The words hold two truths together. Error comes from taking only one of them.
William Kelly"Jesus Christ come in the flesh" supposes neither His deity alone nor His humanity only, but both. To me the expression has no meaning unless it means both united in the same Person. In fact, veering to one side or the other — choosing part of the truth of Christ so as to set aside the rest — is a great source of error here and everywhere. Here it does the deadliest harm.
The error had a name in John's own day
The denial John names was not hypothetical. It matched a teaching circulating while he wrote, which held that Christ was not really a man.
Morrish Bible DictionaryAn early system of philosophy that claimed to be Christian. One of their theories was that the Lord was an Æon and not really a man. Apparently to refute this, the apostle insists that Christ has come "in flesh."
Writers also see the same denial reappearing across the centuries in wider forms. One puts its full range this way:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIt includes all phases of evil doctrines concerning Christ, the Son of the Father. It denies His essential deity and His true humanity. It denies His virgin birth, His infallibility, His holy character, His physical resurrection, and His bodily presence in glory.
Why John calls this the worst evil
John does not say "a deceiver among many." He writes "the deceiver and the antichrist." One writer weighs this against every other trouble a church can face.
William KellyIt is far worse than bringing in division and offence, bad as these are. It is far more serious even than the undermining of morality, ruinous as that must be. To sap or corrupt morality no doubt destroys oneself, and perhaps often others as well. But this defames and degrades Christ, the Son of the Father. This, then, is a bolder effort of Satan. So John calls one guilty of it not only "the deceiver" — every false teacher is more or less a deceiver — but in this case also "the antichrist."
Love needs guards
John's warning does not cancel love. He sets two guards around it.
J. N. DarbyHe had strongly pressed walking in love in the first Epistle. Here too he begs the lady that we love one another — not as a new commandment, but as the one we had from the beginning. Then he takes these two guards of true love: one is the truth and the other is obedience — just what Christ was when He was in the world.
Summary
- Confession — The dividing line is what a person confesses about Christ. He came in flesh. So He existed before He came, and He is God and man in one Person.
- Departure — These deceivers came out from among Christians. So the danger speaks familiar language. It does not look like an outsider.
- Denial — Refusing this confession is not one error among many. It defames the Son of the Father. That is why John calls such a person "the deceiver and the antichrist."
- Detection — Nearness to Christ is what makes false teaching easy to spot. Walking in the truth is the real safeguard.
- Defence — The warning does not cancel love. Truth and obedience guard it — the two things Christ Himself was in the world.