Smoodock's Blog

John mentions that he wasn’t writing because his readers didn’t know (eido – G1492) the truth (1John 2:21). That is to say he wasn’t writing, because his readers didn’t understand the truth. The Greek word eido is translated usually as see (with the eyes) or know (meaning to understand or perceive). The word is used of the wise men who rejoiced to see (G1492) the star they had seen (G1492) in the east (Matthew 2:9-10). The same word is used of Herod’s understanding when he saw (G1492) the wise men mocked him by returning to Mesopotamia without notifying him. So, the word used by John in 1John 2:21 can be used of either physical or mental sight. It doesn’t actually refer to the content of a doctrine, but the ability to understand that doctrine. So, John was saying he wasn’t writing because his readers didn’t understand truth, but because they did and could understand what he was saying. This was something the antichrists couldn’t do, because they rejected the Anointed One and thus refused his anointing that offers spiritual understanding (1John 2:18-20).

The problem was that the antichrists were peddling a lie. As Paul told King Agrippa when he confessed how he had come to believe Jesus was the Christ (the Messiah or Anointed One), he had been living the life of a Pharisee, the strictest sect of the Jews, and he was imprisoned, because he trusted in the hope of the resurrection, which was promised by God to the fathers (Acts 26:5-6). Moreover, while preaching about Christ and his resurrection, Paul claimed he had done nothing more than preach those things, which the prophets and Moses prophesied would come to pass (Acts 26:22). Believers in Christ know and understand that the New Covenant record comes directly out of the Old Covenant promises. However, what was peddled as truth by the antichrists in the first century AD was something different. What they claimed cannot be found in the Old Covenant record. There is no mention of the Oral Law there, and the Messiah was not merely to be a general, but would be one who taught the people the truth of God (Deuteronomy 18:15-19).

The “lie” that the antichrists were peddling concluded there was no need of Christ as one’s moral Savior. That was what the Temple was for. There were sacrifices for sin and forgiveness was promised by God, if one followed the Law of Moses. Moreover, the oral tradition of the fathers, which was passed on to each generation by the scholarly rabbis (scribes in Scripture), was there to help keep one from sinning at all. So, what real Judaism offered was a moral system from God not known or offered anywhere else in the world, and, if one sinned against that Law, one was offered forgiveness through the sacrificial system of the Temple, where the Lord said he would dwell. In addition to all of this, real Judaism had the oral teachings of the fathers that would, if followed, remind a good Jew of his need to keep clean, and this would help to keep him from sinning. What need was there for a moral messiah in all of this? Wasn’t this the prescription which Moses, himself, received from God on Mount Sinai? Wasn’t Judaism the only religion begun by God for the purpose of creating a holy people dedicated to him? What need was there for Christ, a moral savior, in all of this?

This was the lie, which was not of the truth, and John’s readers were able to see and understand this, because they had been endowed with an unction or an anointing from Christ—the Anointed One—and this helped them spiritually see the real truth, concerning which the new Judaism of the first century AD was a complete abrogation. It was, in reality rebellion against God and the Messiah, whom he sent (1John 2:22).

During his public ministry, Jesus claimed that he spoke nothing but what the Father told him to say (John 5:30; cp. 14:24). Moreover, Jesus also claimed that he did nothing, except what he saw the Father doing (John 5:19), and these things were so in order that men would honor the Son in the same manner that they honored the Father (John 5:23). Believing Jesus and receiving him as the One sent from God is what gives one the power to live forever (John 5:24), because Jesus, the Christ, is our life (John 17:3; 20:31; Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:3-4). Without Christ, there is no eternal life (John 1:4). One simply cannot replace Christ with a doctrine or a moral system of behavior. Judaism is wrong pure and simple. Antichrist is the lie that denies the power of God in one’s life. Antichrist is rebellion against God, the same kind of rebellion one sees in Genesis 3. Antichrist is a rebellion that has no need of God, because it focuses on mankind’s own ability to be morally pure by following an ethical system of things—and this is a lie. It is **the** lie that denies both the Father and the Son. Antichrist is the lie that refuses the power of God in one’s life; it refuses the fellowship of God, with his participation in our lives and his power to give eternal life.