Satan’s excuses precede lawless Christians.

1 John 3.7-12.

Many of the verses from today’s passage tend to be yanked out of context.

• “Let no one deceive you” 1Jn 3.7 —used to refer to anything which might trick or mislead Christians, from heresy to the latest internet conspiracy theories.
• “The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” 1Jn 3.8 —treated as though it’s the only reason Jesus came to earth, so certain dark Christians use it to justify their fixation on demonology instead of good news.
• “Everyone borne of God doesn’t sin” 1Jn 3.9 —used to condemn Christians who do sin, instead of encouraging them (really, all of us) to go back into the light.
• And of course those folks who wanna interpret the Cain and Abel story to make Cain an irredeemably evil person… instead of recognizing the LORD and Cain had a conversational relationship, Ge 4.9-15 and God obviously wanted to redeem Cain, not destroy him. (Otherwise he’d have destroyed him!)

All right, best I jump into the text before unpacking it.

1 John 3.7-12 KWL

7Children, let no one deceive you:²

Doing what’s proper is right,

just like Christ is right.

8Doing sin is of the devil,

because the devil sins from the very start.

This is why God’s Son appeared:

To undo the devil’s works.

9Everyone reborn by God doesn’t do sin,

for God’s seed remains in them.¹

They¹ can’t sin,

because they’ve¹ been reborn by God.

10This is how God’s children

and the devil’s children are identified:

Everyone who doesn’t act properly,

who doesn’t love their fellow Christian, isn’t of God.

11This is the message you² heard from the beginning:

We should love one another.

12Not like Cain,

who murdered his brother Abel out of evil.

Why did Cain murder him?

Because Cain’s works were evil.

The works of his brother Abel were proper.

John wrote this right after he defined sin as violating the Law. Parts of the Law are still totally valid. (The ritual sacrifice and ritual cleanliness parts are redundant, and the rules for native Israelis and Israel’s descendants don’t apply to nonresidents and gentiles.) Following those valid parts is still what God expects of a saved people: Now that we belong to Jesus, be like Jesus. He didn’t sin; we shouldn’t sin.

So John went on to say his readers shouldn’t let themselves get tricked into thinking otherwise. ’Cause plenty of us have been deceiving ourselves for years. Like the Christians who are anti-Law, who think Jesus nullified God’s Old Testament commands and therefore nothing’s a sin anymore. John cuts right through this rubbish: If you don’t resist sin, if you don’t behave as God’s children ought, you’re not one of his children. “Everyone reborn by God doesn’t do sin.” 1Jn 3.9 He doesn’t, so we shouldn’t.

No, this doesn’t mean Christians never ever sin. Of course we do. Hence grace. The proper idea, reflected in some translations, is N.T. Wright’s “Everyone who is fathered by God does not go on sinning.” 1Jn 3.8 NTE We don’t continue in a lifestyle of sin; we don’t wanna live that way. We want to follow Jesus!

And people who legitimately wanna follow Jesus, crack open their bibles and find out what Jesus taught so we can follow him. What they’ll invariably find is Jesus took the Law, expounded upon it, and closed all the Pharisee loopholes. We’re not to follow the letter of the Law, like any lawyer, politician, or activist judge; we don’t twist it till it suits us. We’re to follow the original intent of the Law, “the spirit of the Law,” the will of the One who gave it. How does Jesus interpret it? ’Cause we do that.

Those who don’t really wanna follow Jesus, but only look like they do: They prefer loopholes. The bigger the better. They like to quote “Christ is the end of the Law,” Ro 10.4 but they don’t mean, as Paul does, that Christ expresses it better than the Law does itself; they mean Christ ended it. Or “He taketh away the first [Law], that he may establish the second [Law],” He 10.9 not just updating the old covenant with the new, but abolishing it altogether, so that breaking the Law is no longer sin, 1 John 3.4—

1 John 3.4 KWL

Everyone who commits sin also violates the Law.

Sin’s against the Law.

—notwithstanding.

No, this passage isn’t about perfectionism either. John isn’t claiming Christians don’t sin anymore. He already objected to that idea in chapter 1. What he’s stating, is real Christians try not to sin. We no longer consider a lifestyle of sin to be acceptable. “Not perfect, just forgiven” simply isn’t good enough! We have God’s seed in us, the Holy Spirit within us, leading us away from sin and selfishness, and towards Jesus. If we’re following him, we recognize sin is the opposite direction. We don’t make excuses for it any longer!

And if we do make excuses for it… well we’re not God’s children. Really we’re Satan’s.

If you think it’s okay to dismiss the Law, you clearly don’t know Jesus.

1 John 3.4-6.

And now we get to the parts of 1 John which really bug Christians.

1 John 3.4-6 KWL

4Everyone who commits sin also violates the Law.

Sin’s against the Law.

5You² knew Jesus was revealed

so he could take away our sins,

and there’s no sin in him.

6Everyone who remains in Jesus doesn’t sin:

Everyone who sins has neither seen him, nor knows him.

“Violates the Law” is my translation of τὴν ἀνομίαν ποιεῖ/tin anomían piheí, literally “does the anti-Law.” (KJV has “transgresseth… the law”; NIV “breaks the law.”) I capitalize Law because John wasn’t writing about Roman law; plenty of Roman laws encouraged if not committed sin. John meant the Law of Moses, the Hebrew Law, the תּוֹרָה/Toráh. The stuff God commanded the Hebrews at Sinai and thereafter. It’s the formal part of the relationship between the LORD and Israel, the backbone of Hebrew culture, the foundation of the Old Testament, the basis of the commands and interpretations Jesus himself presented to his students, and the backdrop of the Christian religion we practice to facilitate our own relationship with the LORD through Jesus.

The Law warned the Hebrews if they didn’t stick to it, the LORD would remove his hand and their enemies would have at ’em. And history has recorded they really didn’t stick to it. Time and again the LORD had to let Israel’s enemies crap all over them; then when they finally returned to him, he rescued them. The whole point of the Pharisee denomination was to break this cycle once and for all: Create schools which taught the Law to every Hebrew in every generation, make ’em experts in it, and they’d never break it again.

Problem is, some Pharisees missed the point, and thought following the Law saved them. After all, it broke the cycle and kept their enemies back! But that’s not how salvation works. The LORD already saved his people; that’s what the Exodus is about. And now that you’re a saved people, how ought you live? Good question; the Law is the LORD’s answer. Live like this.

But I should point out, same as other comparative religion scholars have pointed out, most Pharisees knew better. Paul was a Pharisee, Pp 3.5, Ac 23.6 and properly articulated the Pharisee view: Nobody’s saved by the Law. That’s not its purpose. That makes people think we’re saved by good deeds and good karma—and unsaved by bad deeds and bad karma. The Law doesn’t save; God does. His grace does. And grace forgives when we slip up and break the Law from time to time. Don’t break the Law; but when we do, we have Jesus. 1Jn 2.1 Our relationship with the LORD is more than merely the Law. It’s not contractual obligations: “I did such-and-so, and now you owe me salvation.” No he doesn’t. But he wants to save us.

So what was Jesus’s beef with Pharisees? Cherry-picking which commands they wanted to enforce, and which ones they’d create loopholes to slip through. Inconsistency. Hypocrisy. You know, all the stuff we Christians commit too.

And contrary to what the scriptures teach, many a Christian claims a giant loophole in the Law: They claim Jesus did away with it. The New Covenant wholly cancels out the old one. Because we’re saved by grace not Law, it’s okay to ignore the Law; even willfully break it.

So when John writes stuff like “Sin’s against the Law,” such Christians’ visceral reaction is to ignore John. Or explain him away, till he means nothing—same as they figure the Law means. They don’t wanna follow the Law. They don’t wanna quit sinning. Much easier to claim nothing’s a sin, or claim God’s reduced all the commands to the ten… plus abortion, homosexuality, and anything else which bugs them personally. Funny how their idea of God only hates the things they do.

Making Christians like us, like God.

1 John 3.2-3.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul, Silas, and Timothy wrote that we’re gonna get raptured at Jesus’s second coming: Dead Christians will be resurrected, living Christians will be transformed into our resurrected selves, and all of us will meet Jesus in the air. 1Th 4.15-18

These sinful sacks of meat we currently carry around: They get swapped for something eternal, to match the eternal life God always meant for us to have. They no longer have the same self-preservation instincts we currently do, ’cause they last forever… and therefore these instincts won’t go overboard and become self-centered and depraved. Our first impulse won’t be to do the selfish, sinful thing; it’ll be to do as Jesus does. Christians call this “the new nature.” Human nature is considered selfish and fallible, but this’ll become the new human nature: Selfless and Spirit-led.

Plus we can finally see Jesus as he really is. Without freaking out, Mk 9.2-8 passing out, Rv 1.17 or going blind. Ac 9.4-9

This is what John refers to in today’s 1 John snippet:

1 John 3.2-3 KWL

2Beloved, we’re now God’s children—

and God’s not yet revealed what we will be.

We’ve known once he reveals it, we will be like God:

We will see him as he is.

3Everyone who has this hope in God:

He cleans them like he is clean.

Now the bit about becoming like God: This tends to weird out certain Christians. Partly ’cause a number of us misinterpret it and think we’re gonna become gods. Lowercase-G gods; we certainly won’t be the God, like Jesus is. But uppercase or lowercase, the idea of us having any form of divinity strikes em as disturbing.

Society doesn’t know what to make of Christ-followers.

1 John 3.1.

John didn’t write any of his books and letters with chapters and verses. Medieval Christians added them. They gave every line in the bible an address, so we could more easily find it. It’s so useful! But every so often, it splits a sentence, paragraph, or train of thought, right where it ought not. As a result Christians tend to lose the train of thought, if not miss it altogether.

• Don’t love society, which is passing away. 1Jn 2.15-17
• Don’t be misled by antichrists; you know better. 1Jn 2.18-23
• Hold on to what you learned in the beginning. 1Jn 2.24-29
• After all, society doesn’t understand us, or God, anyway. 1Jn 3.1
• Meanwhile clean yourselves up. Jesus is coming! 1Jn 3.2-3
• And stop sinning, wouldya? 1Jn 3.4-6

And so on. But today’s bit is gonna zero in on that bit about society not understanding us Christians.

The word from 1 John I translate “society” is κόσμος/kósmos, which the KJV and other bibles translate “world.” That’s imprecise. In context, John means the social order of the world, which is why I’m translating it that way, as I’ve explained elsewhere. Ideally, our social order should be harmonious like God intended, but people are inherently selfish and ruin that order. You’ve seen it aplenty.

1 John 3.1 KWL

Look at the kind of love the Father gives us:

We can be called God’s children!

And we are!

This is why society doesn’t understand us:

It doesn’t understand God.

The Textus Receptus deleted καί ἐσμεν/ké ésmen, “and we are.” John Wycliffe (who translated his bible from the Vulgate) somehow learned these words oughta be included it, but he rendered them “and be [his] sons.” 1Jn 3.1 WYC But the Geneva Bible, following the Textus, dropped ’em—as did the King James.) John included it ’cause it makes clear we’re not merely called God’s kids, as if it’s an honorary title: He adopted us. We legitimately are his kids. And he’s legitimately our Father.

Yeah. We are. Us scumbags. Many a Christian is in utter denial about being scumbags, but the cold hard truth is we totally don’t merit adoption by God; we merit hell. But God loves us so much, he graciously offers us a route out of hell, a place in his family, a room in his kingdom, his presence (he himself!) to live within us and empower us to do mighty things in his name. It’s a hugely disproportionate response to humanity. It’s a massive act of love.

And society doesn’t get this at all. Because society doesn’t do grace. It does karma.

Whenever we get anything resembling grace from our fellow human beings and our governments, society insists there be some level of merit and reciprocity as part of the package. If you’re getting food stamps you darned well better deserve to get food stamps, and how dare you buy “luxuries” with those food stamps, like beef and soda and name-brand breakfast cereals. Meanwhile billionaires get all their taxes forgiven: We should only give freebees to deserving people.

The only exception society recognizes, is inheritance: If a billionaire begets a kid, the kid inherits the billions. Doesn’t matter how utterly useless and stupid this kid might grow up to be, and European royal history (and, for people who don’t know squat about history, reality TV shows) has shown us time and again they can be profoundly stupid and useless. Doesn’t matter how dangerous it can be to put a mighty estate into the hands of a moron. He might hire immoral managers for his companies, and create poisonous products instead of healthy ones. She might implode her newly inherited companies, destroy jobs, and ruin lives. Even so, inheritance is largely accepted by society; if a rich mother wishes to indulge her prodigal daughter, people shrug and say, “Well it’s her money.” But if that same woman wishes to adopt some ill-behaved stranger, make her a daughter, and enrich her? Society will figure she’s lost her mind.

Well, our heavenly Father is lost-his-mind gracious to us. And likewise, society doesn’t get this. They think any religion with sense should make us earn our spots in God’s kingdom, not just get ’em for free. (And the gnostic groups of John’s day didn’t just make their followers earn heaven: They had to pay out the yin-yang for it too.) Free, unlimited grace?—you gotta be nuts. Buncha liberals.

Needing not that any man teach you.

1 John 2.26-29.

Ever heard of a “life verse”? It’s an idea y’find in some Evangelical circles; it means there’s a bible verse which isn’t just a Christian’s favorite verse, but one they adopted as their personal mission statement. They base their whole life on it. Or try to.

A number of popular “life verses” can be found in the very same chapter of 1 Thessalonians:

• “Always rejoice” 1Th 5.16 for people who are big on joy.
• “Pray without ceasing” 1Th 5.17 for people who are big on prayer.
• “Give thanks for everything” 1Th 5.18 for those who definitely do.
• “Don’t quench the Spirit” 1Th 5.19 for those who love to listen to the Spirit.
• “Don’t dismiss prophecy” 1Th 5.20 for prophecy (or prophecy scholar) fans.
• “Test everything” 1Th 5.21 for big skeptics.
• “Abstain from every form of evil” 1Th 5.22 for big legalists.

Anyway. I once worked with this woman whom I’m gonna call Eustacia. Her adopted “life verse” was clearly this one:

1 John 2.27 KJV

But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

Not just ’cause Eustacia quoted the “ye need not that any man teach you” part all the time. Really, nobody could teach her anything. She wouldn’t let ’em. She had “the anointing,” the Holy Spirit abiding in her, teaching her. So we weren’t allowed to.

Eustacia isn’t alone in this interpretation. 1 John 2.27 is the favorite proof text of the go-it-alone Christian. They’re all over Christendom; they’re the folks who won’t go to church lest the pastor and elders try to teach ’em. And since I teach, I run into this type all the time. Paradoxically enough, they even attend my classes. But the instant I tell ’em something they don’t wanna hear, or never heard before and really don’t like, up comes this verse like it’s their personal force field.

Eustacia did go to church; not mine. She picked one of those fiercely independent anti-denominational types, ’cause if she didn’t answer to anyone, why should her church? But if her pastor dared cross her, expect her to immediately find another church and take her family with her. She didn’t really need a pastor anyway. She had Jesus.

Didn’t read bible commentaries; don’t need bible scholars when it’s just you ’n Jesus. Didn’t read books by other Christians; can’t trust men, and all she needed was a good King James bible. Whenever she read it, and came to conclusions about it: Didn’t need anyone’s contributions, insights, and especially corrections. She had license to interpret her bible any old way she liked. If someone asked Eustacia, “How’d you come up with that?” she’d tell ’em. If someone objected, “But the context says otherwise,” she’d point to 1 John 2.27 and proudly proclaim her independence—from any tradition, any preachers, any scholars, any denomination, any fellow Christians.

And while we’re at it: Independence from logic, reason, context, and the Spirit’s fruit.

We cannot have the Father without the Son.

1 John 2.22-25.

In my previous article, about antichrists, I pointed out not every antichrist is a radical atheist. Plenty of people totally believe in God… yet deny Jesus is Christ, or Lord, or in any way like Christians describe him. Sometimes they insist he’s not even real.

Jews fr’instance.

And let me preface this with a rebuke against antisemitism, ’cause there’s still a ton of racism out there. Racists want to hassle and exclude anybody they consider different, for stupid and nonsensical reasons. They wanna hassle Jews, and any excuse will do for them. Historically they’ve used “antichrists” as an excuse, and it is not a valid reason.

In John’s definition of antichrist, anybody who actively rejects Jesus the Nazarene as the Christ is an antichrist; plain and simple.

1 John 2.22 KWL

Who’s the liar, if not the one denying this?—

the one saying “Jesus isn’t Christ”?

This is an antichrist:

One who denies the Father and the Son.

So if you worship the LORD God of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, and the biblical prophets—same as Christians—yet reject the son of God, reject Jesus as Christ our Lord, you’d be what John means by “antichrist.” Cut ’n dried, plain ’n simple. Jews, unless they’ve become Christian, unequivocally fit this definition.

Jews don’t believe Jesus is YHWH; they don’t recognize Jesus is their Messiah. If they did they’d be Christian. (Or “Messianic Jews,” if they prefer to call themselves that; still Christian.) If we try to tell ’em otherwise, they’ll blow it off as the ramblings of silly gentiles; if they’re zealous or young or somewhere in the “cage stage,” they’ll even fight us over it. And fighting the idea that Jesus is Christ, means they most definitely fall under the definition of antichrist.

Obviously it’s unwise to accept religious instruction from people who reject Jesus as Christ, same as we’d reject the teachings of any heretic Christian. (And since spouses instruct one another, it’s unwise to marry a non-Christian Jew for the very same reason we ought not marry any non-Christian gentile.) Unwise to worship God with Jews either, since they’re not gonna pray in Jesus’s name. But in every other way, we have no valid reason to discriminate against Jews, and it’s sin to do so.

Yes, antisemitism is sin. Not to mention dumb: Our Lord is a Jew. He chose to be born a Jew, the biological son of a Jewish mother, the adoptive son of a Jewish father. His title “Christ” comes from the Jews. It makes no sense for any Christian to be an antisemite. But as you’re no doubt aware, there’s no shortage of stupid out there.

Odd thing, though: There are a number of Evangelicals who treat Jews as co-religionists—as slightly wayward brothers. Usually for political reasons. Their particular stripe of Christian nationalism teaches them a distorted idea of the End Times which treats the present-day state of Israel as if it’s the ancient kingdom of Israel, and claims all the prophecies of ancient Israel will be fulfilled by a new country less than a century old, which elects irreligious hypocrites to be their leaders, same as we do. These very same Evangelicals also tend to fear and distrust Muslims. But like I said (even though we’d consider both these religions heretic), religious Jews are antichrists, and religious Muslims aren’t. Just goes to show how partisanship can do mighty weird things to one’s theology.

’Cause no proper “co-religionist” of a Christian is gonna deny Jesus is the Christ. No proper “co-religionist” of a Christian is gonna deny Jesus comes from God, and is one with the Father, and is God. And no proper “co-religionist” of a Christian is gonna claim we can have a relationship with the Father but not the Son: God’s a trinity, Jesus is a person of this trinity, and you simply can’t have the Father apart from Jesus. They’re inseperable.

1 John 2.23-25 KWL

23Everyone who denies the Son,

doesn’t have the Father.

One who confesses the Son

has the Father as well.

24What you² heard from the beginning:

Keep it in you!²

When what you² heard from the beginning

remains in you,²

you’ll² remain in the Father and in the Son.

25This is the promise God promises us:

Life in the age to come.

Properly, believing Jesus is Lord recognizes there’s no other lord. We can’t serve two lords, as Jesus pointed out when he talked about God and mammon. Mt 6.24, Lk 16.13 Muslims teach Prophet Isa ibn Maryam (blessings upon him), as they call Jesus, is superseded by Prophet Muhammad (even more blessings upon him). But Jesus can’t be superseded by anyone or anything; that’s idolatry.

Nor can Jesus be one master of many. He’s not one guru out of a collection we’ve cobbled together. Not an avatar of God, same as the others before him. Not one of seven major prophets. Not a son of God in the very same way you’re a child of God. Jesus is unique, and uniquely Lord. He’s to be followed and worshiped the same way God is. It’s because of this uniqueness, Christians came to recognize he is God.

If you imagine you can challenge, reject, or oppose the Son—meaning Jesus—and think you’re still good with God, you’re in for a significant surprise. You can’t oppose the Son without opposing the Father who sent him.

Antichrists: When pagans wanna see Christianity gone.

1 John 2.18-23.

In our culture we find four definitions of antichrist:

1. The Beast, Rv 13.7 the lawless one, 2Ti 2.3 who’s popularly called the Antichrist—an End Times figure who attempts to deceive and conquer the world, till Christ Jesus overthrows him.
2. Anyone claiming they’re Christ, and not Jesus the Nazarene. They don’t have to use the title “Christ,” but they nonetheless insist they should be revered, followed, and worshiped instead of (or more than) Jesus the Nazarene.
3. Someone against Christ. They object to Christ Jesus and his authority, and refuse to recognize him.
4. Someone against orthodox Christianity: They reject Christian beliefs about Jesus, and either insist he’s not YHWH or not human. Sometimes that he’s not even historical.
5. Someone against Christians. (Which is a false definition, pitched by misbehaving Christians who don’t wanna be opposed. But when Christians misbehave, even Jesus is against them, and it’d be nuts to say Christ is antichrist.)

Most of the time people mean the first definition, the Beast; Christians and pagans alike. It may surprise yoiu to learn the Beast is never called an antichrist by the scriptures. Oh it’s definitely anti-Christ, but still. Medieval Christians got into the habit of referring to the Beast as Antichrist, and it stuck. But in the bible it’s just the θηρίον/thiríon, “wild animal,” KJV “beast.”

Whereas when the apostles used the word ἀντίχριστος/antíhristos, “antichrist,” they meant the third definition: People who oppose Jesus the Nazarene. People who are literally anti Christ.

You know the type. They’re not simply unbelievers, like the two-thirds of the people on this planet who don’t acknowledge, or very casually acknowledge but don’t mean it, that Jesus is Lord. Unbelief doesn’t make you an antichrist. To become an antichrist you gotta actively oppose Christ. Antichrists aren’t passive nonbelievers: They wanna fight Jesus.

Sometimes they do believe Jesus exists—he’s legitimately God, he’s actually in heaven—but they hate him for one reason or another, so they’re having a tantrum. I’ve encountered this phenomenon. It’s really stupid and futile, but yep, they’re fighting Jesus ’cause they’ve got some grudge against him. Sometimes they snap out of it, repent, and become Christian again; sometimes they never do.

And there are enough of them so that many Christian apologists think all antichrists are like this. In fact a popular apologetics argument is, “If you don’t believe God is real, why are you so angry with him? Sounds like you actually do believe he’s real.” But this is a really weak argument. It’s like telling an angry anti-Mormon, “If you don’t believe the Book of Mormon is real, why are you so angry with it?” They’re angry because they need to work on the fruit of the Spirit; they haven’t let the Spirit show them how to control their emotions. They’re angry because they think it’s okay to be “righteously angry” over false teachings. It doesn’t necessarily have belief and disappointment at its core. Sometmes it does, but certainly not in every instance.

In recent decades, Christians have anxiously pointed to what they fear is an upsurge of “New Atheism”: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, Michael Newdow, and various vocal antichrists. These are nontheists who gleefully bash religion in general, but they go hard against Christianity with hammer and tongs, since it is after all the prevalent religion in their countries. These Christians fear the militant nontheists may convince more people to reject and fight Christianity, and maybe even try to get it banned in our homelands. First in the public square, then in private.

I have a longer memory than these fearful people. There have always been militant nontheists. Back during the Cold War, when the God-fearing United States was battling the godless Communists, nontheists were looked on with suspicion. They were considered radicals, possibly treasonous, ’cause they were undermining good ol’ fashioned American values and society. The more outspoken a nontheist got, the more backlash they got. But they were most definitely around. Noam Chomsky, H.L. Mencken, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Linus Pauling, Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry, Gore Vidal, and others were quite outspoken against religion and Christianity. Ask any nontheist nowadays about their forebears, and they’ll kindly point ’em out to you.

Once the Red Menace was no longer so menacing, militant nontheism went mainstream in the west. These “New Atheists” felt free to be openly critical of Christianity. They still get away with it ’cause nobody doubts their patriotism anymore (although y’notice it’s rare for a nontheist to get elected to public office). Plus God hasn’t struck these guys down with lightning. True, that’s mixing up Jehovah and Zeus… as if nontheists care, ’cause all gods are the same to them.

Nontheists are the most obvious antichrists, but they’re far from the only ones. Don’t forget other religions. Judaism doesn’t recognize Jesus as Messiah either, and sometimes its practitioners attack Jesus lest anyone get the idea Jews can become Christian (you know, like the first apostles). Certain Hindus are outraged at the way Christianity flattens their caste system, so they fight it vigorously. Certain Muslims get offended when anyone (including a growing number of Muslims!) ranks Prophet Jesus higher than Prophet Muhammad, and likewise fight Christian beliefs, and even get downright antichristian. But there remains a big difference between religious and irreligious antichrists: Religious ones often remember to behave with some degree of goodness. Irreligious ones feel no such restriction whatsoever.

John, and first-century antichrists.

In John’s day, in John’s church, antichrists cropped up. They got mixed up in his church… then objected to what he taught about Jesus, left, and shared their heretic ideas with anyone who’d listen. Whether they were influenced by gnostics, or started their own gnostic groups, I dunno.

But John figured they were an obvious sign the end was coming soon. ’Cause Jesus had warned him (and us) there’d be antichrists. Mk 13.6 So this is what he wrote in his first letter:

1 John 2.18-23 KWL

18Children, it’s the last hour.

And just as you² heard, “Antichrist is coming!”

now many antichrists have come.

Thus you² know it’s the last hour.

19They come from among us,

but they aren’t from us,

for if they were from us,

they should’ve remained with us still.

But they left so they might be revealed,

because none of them are from us.

20You² have an anointing from the Holy Spirit

and know all this.

21I don’t write you²

because you² don’t know the truth,

but because you² do know it,

and because every lie doesn’t come from truth.

22Who’s the liar, if not the one denying this?—

the one saying “Jesus isn’t Christ”?

This is an antichrist:

One who denies the Father and the Son.

23Everyone who denies the Son,

doesn’t have the Father.

One who confesses the Son,

has the Father as well.

And we still have this phenomenon in our churches. There are people who dabble in Christianity, who grow up Christian, yet don’t really believe Jesus is Lord and God, and are just going through the motions for now. I’ve met ’em. Tell them Jesus is God, and they’ll reply, “Well no, Jesus is the son of God.” No, they’re not trying to clarify Jesus’s theological definition; they’re trying to claim he’s not God. I’ve actually heard preachers, from the pulpit, discourage Christians from praying to Jesus on the grounds they should be praying to the Father; that the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to pray, “Our Father,” not “Dear Jesus.” But since God’s a trinity, if you pray to any person in the trinity, you’re praying to God… unless you don’t believe the Son and the Holy Spirit are God of God, truly God, coequal to the Father. And these people regularly reveal they don’t believe that.

Some of them can suspend their disbelief forever, but for many the Holy Spirit’s gonna force them to deal with their doubts and pick a side: Believe in Jesus, or not. And sometimes they refuse to believe in Jesus, and spend the rest of their lives quietly slipping their antichrist beliefs into every church gathering they attend. Others refuse to believe in Jesus, grow weary of the façade, leave church, quit Jesus, go nontheist, and start mocking their old phony lifestyle. And that’s the sort of antichrists we see who publicly mock Christianity (or in their case, Christianism): They learned how to fake their religion, and assume the rest of us are doing likewise. They learned to fake the Spirit’s fruit, to fake supernatural acts, to fake prophecy, to pretend to feel God’s presence… and they presume everybody in Christendom does likewise.

Blaming bad Christians.

There’s been a trend among Christians for the past four decades: We claim people turn antichrist (or turn pagan, or stray from Christianity) because of Christians behaving badly. Just like Father Brennan Manning’s spoken-word intro to the 1995 DC Talk song, “What If I Stumble?”:

”The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today are Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

All due respect to Manning, but that’s rubbish. “I’d follow Jesus if it weren’t for all the a--holes who call themselves Christian”? I follow him regardless. Loads of Christians do. This excuse is the same crap the Judeans tried to pull when they told Jesus, “Show us a miracle and we’ll believe.” Jn 6.30, Mt 12.38 No they wouldn’t.

The real cause, as usual, is good ol’ human depravity. People wanna do as we will. If we believe in Jesus, but don’t really wanna follow him, we’ll invent loopholes and do as we will. If we don’t believe in Jesus, we won’t need loopholes; we’ll just be pagan or nontheist, and do as we will. But sometimes these folks run into Christians who wanna evangelize ’em, and in order to get these Christians off their back, the guilt card works great: “If you Christians were only more like Christ, I’d believe.” Again, no they wouldn’t.

Bad Christians are an easy target. They make it easy for antichrists to point to them, and paint all Christians as the rotten fruit of a rotten religion. I gotta agree with the antichrists about hypocrisy and bad religion; they’re not wrong. But that’s not the reason they’re antichrists. Here are the real reasons:

• They were raised pagan. Had no beliefs one way or another about Christ. Till they met militant nontheists who insisted religion is stupid, religious people are fools, and religious leaders (who’d include Jesus, I suppose) are con artists. They fell in, and now proclaim the same thing. But they’re not speaking from any experience. Just regurgitating stuff they’ve heard. Makes ’em feel good to imagine they haven’t been brainwashed by overzealous hypocrites who unquestioningly follow the teachings of a few charismatic preachers… hey, waitaminnit.
• They were raised or influenced by bad Christians who seriously botched their representation of Jesus. The bad Christians were jerks, who claimed Jesus authorized their awful, control-freak behavior, and was kind of a jerk too. The antichrists feel they’re quite right to object to a bad founder of a bad religion. Like the jerklike Christians, they found a few verses they could quote out of context which make Jesus sound overzealous, crazy, or violent, and that’s how they choose to reinterpret him. Or they adopted some of the weirder ideas about Historical Jesus, and are attacking that guy.
• They knew Christians who made really outlandish claims about Jesus. Made him sound like a genie who’d grant every wish. Turns out he’s not that way at all, and once he told them no, they felt betrayed, blamed him… and figured they’d get him back by quitting him. Like I said, many apologists naïvely think every antichrist is bitter at Jesus. Nope. It’s a percentage, but ’tain’t that big.
• Actually they don’t think Christ is awful. But they’ve found when they bash him a little, it really freaks Christians out… and that’s kinda fun. Besides, they figure Jesus is long dead, so who’s it hurting?… other than Christians.
• They joined a religion who sees Christ as competition. I already mentioned a few. They wanna neutralize Jesus’s influence. So they reinterpret him, or even slander him, through that religion’s lenses.

Basically comes down to ignorance, willful or not; or intellectual dishonesty.

Dishonesty’s a pretty common behavior among antichrists. They’ll claim they were raised Christian, but our hypocrisy made ’em quit. The dishonest part is whose hypocrisy made ’em quit: Their own. They never wanted to know Christ, so they never did. I grant they might’ve held some beliefs, or even had personal experiences. But like the Hebrews in the Exodus, none of these experiences sunk in. If they really knew God, they’d leave his bad followers for a better church; nontheism would never be an option. Neither would going antichrist.

Identifying antichrists.

John’s definition of antichrist is very simple:

1 John 2.22 KWL

Who’s the liar, if not the one denying this?—

“Jesus isn’t Christ”?

This is an antichrist:

One who denies the Father and the Son.

Outside our churches, it’s really easy to identify antichrists. They’re the ones boldly bashing Christianity and Christ. But within our churches, they’re a little harder to detect because they’re not overtly being hostile. If they don’t believe Jesus is Lord and Christ, if they reject what the scriptures tell us about Jesus’s relationship to his Father, John calls ’em antichrists.

And if you don’t know how they feel about Jesus… well there’s always fruit. If they lack the Spirit’s fruit, if they act like they’re still in darkness instead of the light, they should stand out clearly.

We need to identify the antichrists among us. For two reasons.

First we want ’em to meet, get to know, and follow Jesus! We never want ’em to become those apostates who claim they went to church for years but never authentically encountered Jesus: Make sure that yes, they did indeed. Sometimes it’ll stop their apostasy dead in its tracks. Hate to tell you, though: Sometimes they’ll leave anyway, and ruin themselves all the more by denying what they truly saw. Either way, we did our job of actually introducing them to Jesus.

Second, we need to make really sure they never ever slip into leadership positions. ’Cause they can. And do. All the time. A nice guy becomes the music pastor, or youth pastor, or small group leader, or Sunday school teacher… and he has doubts, or she has heretic ideas, or he’s fruitless and graceless and backbiting and unkind (but talented!), or she’s checking out which boys in the youth group she could get away with nailing (but she’s the pastor’s daughter!). It’s every church’s worst-case scenario, and it happens way too often. These folks get found out, kicked out, and spend the rest of their lives bitterly denouncing Christianity and Christ. How’d they slip past us? Because we were looking at their façade, not their fruit.

Watch out, John reminded us. Don’t fall for any good-looking, impressive-sounding Christian. Test ’em. 1Jn 4.1-6 Check for humility. Make sure they actually do know Jesus. Look for fruit. When in doubt, nudge ’em towards God-encounters. Make it impossible for them to stagger in any antichrist direction, ’cause they know Christ. Make sure of that for yourself, while you’re at it.