G. Warning Against Antichrists (2:18-27)

Based on their teaching, the seceders are condemned as antichrist. Certain key ideas emerge in this section.

The last hour may simply be a synonym for “the last days,” a NT idiom referring to the time between Christ’s first and second advents. Some, however, think it is more specific than that and suggest the climactic hour of the last days, hence the closing moments of history. The basic principle is the same in either case: That which is to appear in the end already appears in the penultimate period, though perhaps in paler form. This conceptual model justifies John’s declaration that antichrist is to be embodied in a single person at the end of the age but is also a present fact. The spirit of antichrist will come to climactic expression in “the lawless one” (2Th 2:3-12) in the Day of the Lord, but that spirit is already at work in the world.

For John, seceders who deny the reality of the Incarnation embody the spirit of antichrist (4:3); here it expresses itself in denial that Jesus is the Christ. Those with gnostic tendencies who regard the material world as evil would have intellectual difficulty believing that the eternal Christ could be embodied in the human Jesus. Cerinthus, who many think is the main teacher rebuked here, taught that the Christ took temporary possession of the man Jesus at his baptism but departed before the Passion. Yet our redemption depends on a real Incarnation. Otherwise there is no salvation. Since this denial is at the same time a denial that the Father was really involved in our redemption, it denies the Father as well as the Son (2:22).

A second heresy of the seceders is also condemned: The claim to have esoteric knowledge not available to the general body of believers. In response, John declares the knowledge of truth to be universal among believers: All of you know the truth. This knowledge is the result of an anointing from the Holy One (lit. “the Anointed One,” i.e., Christ).

What is the meaning of this anointing? Two major interpretations have been offered. First, based on the OT use of the term, most interpreters think it refers to the Holy Spirit. This has the added strength of being the natural interpretation of the work of the Paraclete referred to in John 14:17; 15:26; and 16:13. However, this position is open to the same criticism as the claim of the heretics. It can be accused of being a private illumination susceptible to subjective fantasizing.

The second proposal avoids this weakness by referring the anointing to the Word of God. There is a parallel to this idea in 2:14 and 2 John 2 where the Word of God or truth remains in them (this would be the preached word). This view has an objective point of reference that avoids the latent subjectivism of the first position.

Following I. de la Potterie, I. H. Marshall attempts to combine the two by defining the anointing as “the Word taught to converts before their baptism and apprehended by them through the work of the Spirit in their hearts (cf. 1 Thess. 1:5f).” In summary, this interpretation says that “the antidote to false teaching is the inward reception of the Word of God, administered and confirmed by the work of the Spirit” (Marshall, 155).

The reference to the anointing from the Holy One is clearly a reference to Jesus and is another evidence of the writer’s commitment to the incarnational truth of the Gospel with which he opened his epistle.