Sermon outline

INTRODUCTION
John’s readers are in danger of being misled, and John writes to warn them about false teachers and deceivers. John is confident that his “little children” will be delivered from the deceivers because they have an “anointing” from God.

THE TEXT
“Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us . . . .” (1 John 2:18-29).

ANTICHRIST
Christians have said a great many foolish things about the “antichrist,” particularly in the past couple of centuries. John is the only writer of the New Testament to use the word, and the word appears only in his letters and never in Revelation. It’s clear that John is not talking about a single person, some kind of world dictator, because he uses the word in the plural (2:18). And he helpfully defines what he means by “antichrist”: The “one who denies that Jesus is the Christ,” which also means “the one who denies the Father and the Son” (2:22). John is saying that his readers are living in the last hours of the old world, and he knows this because Jesus’ predictions about false prophets and false christs are coming to pass (cf. Matthew 24:22-24; cf. 1 John 4:1). Those who abandon faith in the Son “go out” from the church, a sign that they never fully participated in the new covenant to begin with (2:19).

ANTIDOTE TO ANTICHRIST
John’s readers will escape the deceptions of antichrists if they remain in the things they heard from John and the other apostles (2:24). Ultimately, though, their perseverance in the truth does not depend on their own faithfulness to the gospel, but on God’s work in them. John says that each of his readers has received an “anointing” (2:21, 27). In the Old Testament, priests and kings were anointed; John is implying that his readers, because they are in Christ the “Anointed,” are all priests and kings (cf. Revelation 1:6; 5:10).

The Spirit is associated with anointing a number of times in Scripture (1 Samuel 16:13; Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38). Concretely, the anointing refers to the gift of the Spirit, who has been poured out on the church and who leads the church into truth (John 16:13; 1 Corinthians 2:10). Because the members of the church are anointed with the Spirit, they know the truth. To combat deceivers, antichrists, and false prophets, they must continue in the Spirit that anointed them (2:27).

PRACTICING RIGHTEOUSNESS
As Jesus emphasized (John 15), abiding in Him and in His Spirit involves obedience to the commandments of God. As we abide in Him and practice righteousness, we know we are born of Him and have confidence in the final judgment (2:28-29). Our confidence in the judgment does not rest in ourselves. It rests in Christ, and in the fact that He will complete the work He has begun, enabling those who are born of Him to practice righteousness.