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DECEMBER 4
Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son
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does not have the Father either; he who
acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
2:19 They went out from us,…none of them 24 Therefore let that abide in you which you
were of us. The first characteristic mentioned heard from the beginning. If what you heard
of antichrists, i.e., false teachers and deceivers from the beginning abides in you, you also will
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(vv. 22–26), is that they depart from the faith- abide in the Son and in the Father. And this
ful. They arise from within the church and is the promise that He has promised us—eter-
depart from true fellowship and lead people nal life.
out with them.The verse also places emphasis 26 These things I have written to you con-
on the doctrine of the perseverance of the cerning those who try to deceive you. But the
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saints. Those genuinely born again endure in anointing which you have received from Him
faith and fellowship and the truth (1 Cor. abides in you, and you do not need that anyone
11:19; 2 Tim. 2:12). The ultimate test of true teach you; but as the same anointing teaches
Christianity is endurance (Mark 13:13; Heb.
3:14). The departure of people from the truth you concerning all things, and is true, and is
and the church is their unmasking. not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will
abide in Him.
28 And now, little children, abide in Him, that
written to you because you do not know the when He appears, we may have confidence
truth, but because you know it, and that no lie and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.
is of the truth. 29 If you know that He is righteous, you know
22 that everyone who practices righteousness is
Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus
is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the born of Him.

DAY 4: How does 1 John help us understand some of the destructive teaching
that attacked Christianity in the first century?

Paul, Peter, and John all faced early forms of a system of false teaching that later became
known as Gnosticism.That term (derived from the Greek word “knowledge”) refers to the habit that
gnostics had of claiming an elevated knowledge,a higher truth known only to those in on the deep
things. Those initiated into this mystical knowledge of truth had a higher internal authority than
Scripture.This resulted in a chaotic situation in which the gnostics tried to judge divine revelation
by human ideas rather than judging human ideas by divine revelation (1 John 2:15–17).
Philosophically,the heresy relied on a distortion of Platonism.It advocated a dualism in which
matter was inherently evil and spirit was good. One of the direct errors of this heresy involved
attributing some form of deity to Christ but denying His true humanity,supposedly to preserve Him
from evil (which they concluded He would be if He actually came in the flesh).Such a view destroys
not only the true humanity of Jesus, but also the atonement work of Christ. Jesus must not only
have been truly God,but also the truly human (physically real) man who actually suffered and died
upon the cross in order to be the acceptable substitutionary sacrifice for sin (Heb.2:14–17).The bib-
lical view of Jesus affirms His complete humanity, as well as His full deity.
The gnostic heresy, even in John’s day, featured two basic forms: 1) Docetism; and 2) the error
of Cerinthus. Docetism (from a Greek word that means,“to appear”) asserted that Jesus’ physical
body was not real but only “seemed” to be physical. John forcefully and repeatedly affirmed the
physical reality of Jesus.He reminded his readers that he was an eyewitness to Him (“heard,”“seen,”
“handled,” “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh”; 1 John 1:1–4; 4:2,3). The other form of early
Gnosticism was traced back to Cerinthus by the early church apologist Irenaeus. Cerinthus taught
that Christ’s “spirit” descended on the human Jesus at His baptism but left Him shortly before His
crucifixion.John asserted that the Jesus who was baptized at the beginning of His ministry was the
same Person who was crucified on the cross (1 John 5:6).
John does not directly specify the early gnostic beliefs, but his arguments offer clear clues
about his targets.Further,John’s wisdom was to avoid direct attacks on rapidly shifting heresies,but
to provide a timely, positive restatement of the fundamentals of the faith that would provide time-
less truth and answers for later generations of Christians.

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