Smoodock's Blog

John told his readers to “…let that abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning” (1John 2:24), but what does this mean in the context of “you need not that any man teach you” (1John 2:27)? On the one hand, John warned his readers against the false teachers, saying they are liars and no liar is of the truth (1John 2:21-22). On the other hand, and in contrast to this, John tells his readers you have an unction or an anointing and “you know all things” (1John 2:20). How had they come to “know all things”? Wasn’t it because they had an anointing? So, in other words, the anointing itself teaches them the difference between the truth and the lie. So, in the light of this, how should we understand “what you have heard from the beginning” (1John 2:24)?

Once more we need to ask ourselves what John meant by the beginning. Was it what they heard when they first heard and believed the Gospel, as many commentaries claim? John’s readers weren’t present at the beginning of the Gospel (Mark 1:1; Philippians 4:15; Hebrews 2:3), when Jesus first began to preach. Neither were they present for the beginning of the miracles of Jesus (John 2:11), or the beginning or the first principles of the oracles of God (Hebrews 5:12). So, what beginning is John referring to in 1John 2:24? If John is telling his readers to remember how they had come to know the Gospel and what they had been taught at that time by the evangelists or the Apostles, how does saying that fit into the context of rejecting the antichrists and receiving the unction or of rejecting the lie and receiving the truth from the anointing, through which they have been enabled to “know all things” (1John 2:20)? The key to understanding John’s reference to the beginning is “you need not that any man teach you” (1John 2:27).[1] That would not only include the antichrists but also believing pastors, evangelists and apostles. They are men, too, and John’s readers had no need that **any man** teach them.

What John is referring to is how the New Covenant operates as opposed to the Old Covenant. After Israel had broken their covenant with God and were carried away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah wrote a letter to the people and their elders, priests and prophets (Jeremiah 29:1). Later, he prophesied that the Lord would make a New Covenant with Israel:

Behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD, I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, Know the LORD, for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the LORD, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34; emphasis mine)

Notice that when the New Covenant would come, folks would have no need that any man teach them about the Lord, because everyone, from the least to the greatest, would know him. How was this so, and how was it different from the Old Covenant God made with Israel under Moses?

Under the Old Covenant folks were born into their relationship with the Lord. God chose the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for his people, and as such each one had to be taught all about their heritage and their relationship with the Almighty. This wasn’t so under the New Covenant. Folks heard and believed the Gospel and only after they believed did they come into a relationship with the Lord. They knew him from the very first day they entered into that relationship. They had an anointing through which they were able to understand spiritual things, so it was the anointing, itself, not men who taught them about God. Of course, men did preach the Gospel, telling people about Jesus and what he did, but it is in believing the Gospel that men entered into a relationship with the Lord. They weren’t already in that relationship and had to be taught who God was. The first learned who God was and then entered into a relationship or a covenant with him.

Therefore, when John told his readers to “let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning” (1John 2:24), he was telling them let what they heard from the Beginning or what they heard from the Lord (the anointing; see verse-20; cp. Colossians 1:18; Revelation 3:14; 21:6; 22:13), let that abide in them. In other words, if the words they heard from the Beginning (the anointing—verse 20) “would remain in you, you will also continue in the Son, and in the Father” (1John 2:24; cp. John 15:7).

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[1] See my first study in John’s first epistle: That Which Was from the Beginning.