(Text Only)
Title: The Origin of All Things
I. What does John mean when he says, “you know all things”?
(v. 20-21)
At first, this statement by John seems a bit absurd, and in the hands of the ignorant, can be a disastrous verse to quote, but when we take it in context, and then also compare it to other things John has recorded, it comes into focus much more clearly. Look with me at how John records the words of Christ in his Gospel, John 16:12-13:
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth…
Obviously, what Jesus is talking about here is that once Christ left, the helper, the Holy Spirit came and dwelt in us, giving us knowledge to all truth. John reiterates this point in verse 20 when he reminds us that the qualification of this knowledge is not studying, or talent, but rather that we “have an anointing from the Holy One” and it is this anointing that grants us knowledge of what the truth really is.
And let me also remind us this morning that this anointing is the reason John is writing to these people anyway. (Verse 21) John knows his counsel is not falling on deaf ears, but that his listeners are the regenerate people of Christ, and, therefore, they are fully capable of understanding what John is saying because the truth is in them.
Remember that one of the main reasons John is writing this letter is to refute Gnosticism and Doecistism, both of which denied the full divinity of Christ either by saying that Christ wasn’t fully flesh, or by saying he was less than a God.
It is those people that John is calling antichrists, it is those people that claim to have the truth but do not.
II. What is the qualifier of an antichrist?
(V22)
And, for John, what is the pivotal issue of what makes someone an antichrist? What is the pivotal issue that makes someone “and adversary of the Messiah”? It is simply this: to deny that Jesus is the Christ.
Those who deny that Christ is the Messiah have no truth in them. Period.
John says, “Hey, here is your litmus test. You want to know if someone is a false teacher? You want to know if someone is credible? You want to know if you can spiritually trust someone? It all starts with one simple question. The question is not (as we often like to ask it) Who was Jesus? That question is far to easy, far to open ended. The question is much more specific, much more revealing. The right question to ask is: Is Jesus Christ the Messiah? Is He the Son of God, fully man, fully God, sent here to be a sacrifice for our sin.”
This is the problem with semantics in theology today. You can ask someone who Jesus was and get an answer that sounds good and nice and acceptable, and that person is no more saved than my cat. But if you tighten down the question a bit, if you call Christ’s identity, not simply his mission or his work into question, then you are really getting somewhere.
III. You can’t have the Father without the Son.
(V23) For all of those who want to say there are many paths to God: explain your way out of this passage.
For all of those who say that Jesus Christ is but one of many ways to salvation, explain what John is saying here.
For those who would say that one’s spirituality, and not their profession of Jesus is what’s really important, explain this to me.
For those who would say that Christ’s blood is unnecessary to pay for your sin, that God knows your heart without the intervention of Christ, explain this to me.
This verse is every bit as telling as Christ’s own words in John 14:6
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
And the verse works the other way as well. You can’t have Jesus without the Father. In other words, admiring Jesus’ teaching, but not acknowledging who his father is doesn’t do you a lick of good.
Recognizing that Jesus of Nazareth has shaped human history more than any other figure in recorded time, won’t do you any good at the end of your life. You can’t just choose the parts of Jesus that you like. You also can’t just decide your own qualification to be right before God. It is either all of Christ, and all of the Father, or none of either of them.
Application:
So what is the application, what are we to try to take from today?
Ideas?
1. It is the Holy Spirits anointing that allows us to see any truth at all. (Grace)
2. The best way to qualify a Christian is to ask them if Jesus is the Messiah. (Don’t let people off the hook, make them explain their theology to you. If you don’t, you could be sitting under an antichrist…remember, most antichrists are, or were, part of the Church.)
3. The ONLY way to the father is through Jesus. (The exclusivity of Christ is the paramount issue that is the “line in the sand.” It’s the reason we are so hated by the world.)