Many Antichrists

"Dear children, this is the last hour..." (1 John 2:18)

There is an enduring fascination with the end, a deep desire within us that seems to want to know how everything turns out. Most every generation since Jesus' time has assumed, on some level, that they are the last. And that affects how we read passages like the latter part of 1 John 2, when John begins using words like "last" and "antichrist."

The problem for us is that there are so many cultural layers that surround that word, "antichrist." John is not here talking about a world ruler that some believe will come at the end of time. In fact, John refers to "many antichrists" (2:18) who were part of the church ("went out from us," 2:19) but never, apparently, really belonged to Christ. At the very least, John seems to say, they have turned their back on Jesus and turned toward their own agendas...agendas which stand in opposition to Jesus' agenda (hence, the name "anti-christ").

John even gives us a definition of an antichrist: "whoever denies Jesus is the Christ" (2:22). For John, that is the key upon which everything else hangs. Do you believe Jesus is the savior, the Son of God, the one who came to rescue his people?

Remains of pagan temples, Caesarea Philippi

Perhaps John is thinking back to a night he shared with Jesus and the other disciples at a place called Caesarea Philippi. In the midst of so many pagan temples, Jesus asked them one critical question: "Who do you say that I am?" No one but Peter was bold enough or certain enough to answer that night, but at this point, late in his life, John is certain. Jesus is the Christ. He is the savior of the world, and anyone who says otherwise is an antichrist (and a liar, 2:22).

That is the defining moment for each of us. C. S. Lewis, great defender of the faith, put it this way:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (Mere Christianity).

Who do you say he is? And what does your confession say about you?