That which was from the beginning…, the Word of life …·which we have seen and heard, we proclaim…so that YOU[i] may have fellowship with us, and…with the Father and with his Son... ·If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ·If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us… ·I am writing…so that YOU may not sin, but if anyone does sin we have an Advocate[ii] [toward] the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous… ·Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. ...·…Fathers, … YOU know him who was from the beginning; …{young people}, …YOU have overcome the evil one; ·[boys and girls], {…YOU know the Father}. (1 John 1:1,3,7-8; 2:1,4,13b-14a ESV {NRSV} [S4A])

It is the last hour... so now many antichrists have come...; ·they went out from us. ...If they had been of us they would have continued with us. ...·But YOU have {received anointing [Gr. chrisma] from} the Holy One and YOU all have knowledge. ·I write to YOU, not because YOU do not know the truth, but because YOU know it. ...·He who denies that Jesus is the Christ [Gr. christos]...is the antichrist; he denies the Father and the Son. ·{Anyone who denies the Son does not have the Father}; whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. ...·I write… about those who are trying to deceive YOU. ·But the anointing [chrisma] YOU received from him abides in YOU. YOU have no need that anyone should teach YOU. His anointing [chrisma] teaches YOU about everything ...; abide in him! ...·...Everyone who practices righteousness has been [begotten] of him. (1 Jn.2:18-23,26-27,29 ESV {Barclay} [S4A])

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. ...·YOU know that he appeared to take away sin, and in him there is no sin. ·{Anyone} who keeps on sinning {has not} seen him or known him. ·Dear children, let no one deceive YOU. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. ...·By this it is evident who are the children [Gr. tekna] of God and who are the children [tekna][iii] of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not from God. ...·This is his commandment: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another. ...·Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in them. We know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 Jn.3:4-7,10a,23-24 ESV {Barclay})

Beloved, …test the spirits...; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ·By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ·and every spirit that does not...is...the spirit of the antichrist. ...·They are from the world; they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. ·We are from God: whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us—by this we know the Spirit of truth from the spirit of error. ...·Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ [christos] has been [begotten] of God and...·…overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world—our faith ·… that Jesus is the Son of God. ...·…The Son of God has come… so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son, Jesus Christ. (1 Jn.4:1-3,5-6; 5:1a,4-5,20 ESV [S4A])

In his letter, John writes about a fourth danger to our fellowship with the Father and with Jesus, and with each other: the dark path of deception. We enter into self-deception when we know the truth but adjust it to fit our own view of reality: by not taking our own sin seriously, or by claiming to have fellowship with God even though we are disobeying one or more of his commands. Those in the church most vulnerable to self-deception are people who enjoy special gifting or some other social status. So the deception by others that John has in mind actually comes from influential church members, or former church members. These are the people John is calling ‘antichrists' and ‘false prophets’, not people who have never been identified with the church!

One such false teacher in John's day was Cerinthus. He taught that ‘the Christ’ was the divine essence that entered Jesus' body at his baptism in the form of a dove but left before his body was crucified. In this view, ‘Son of God’ describes a spiritual commodity that Jesus possessed, and one that we too can possess. Thus salvation is about possessing the spiritual knowledge that was in Jesus—either through a rigorous lifestyle of material and bodily self-denial (asceticism), or through the quest for spiritual knowledge in your mind while allowing your body to pursue its natural physical appetites and drives (gluttony, sexual promiscuity, violent anger, slander, substance abuse, etc.). This teaching was strongly influenced by a Greek philosophy called Gnosticism—in which your ‘spirit’ is seen as the real ‘you’. Your body is part of the corrupted and evil material world, so you need to try to escape from it into the purity of the spiritual world.[iv]

Christians today fall for this same deception when they think that being ‘spiritual’ is more about a successful exercise of spiritual gifts and ministries—either in themselves or in leaders they admire—than about personal righteous behavior in the use of their bodies (like in regard to sexual behavior, or how they speak about others, etc.). The prophet Haggai warned Israel's priests about such a ‘gnostic’ separation between spiritual ministry and bodily obedience (Hag.2:10-14). So when we redefine spirituality as something separate from what we do in our bodies, John says, we deny that Jesus is God's Anointed One [Gr. christo] who came ‘in the flesh’. For he came, and sent his Spirit, so that we might learn to ‘practice righteousness’ in our weak human bodies like he did.

John connects such deceptive ideas about Jesus to our relationship with the Father. People who only focus on trying to apply the spiritual principles practiced by Jesus also ‘deny the Father and the Son’. Since this can also be translated ‘the Father with the Son’, it is the relationship that Jesus always enjoyed with the Father that they are denying—a relationship with him that is also for us to enjoy. To be ‘begotten of God’ as an adult daughter or son of the Father, by the Holy Spirit (Med.#53 & Med.#58), we must put our faith in Jesus—as the Messiah [christo] who was not only a human being, but who ‘came’ into this world from somewhere else. He is also, from the beginning, the divine Word of God. People who deny part of who Jesus is—under the influence of worldly ideas and the evil one—cannot ‘have the Father’; for no one comes to the Father except through him (Med.#2).

Beginning in the late 19^th century, many Western Christians, influenced by the European Enlightenment, began proclaiming that Jesus was a only a great moral teacher of spiritual truths who was divinely inspired, but not himself divine. And though they taught a lot about God as Father to all mankind. To them John would say: Sorry, but you don’t have the Father if you deny part of what makes Jesus God's Anointed One. For in doing so, you are denying something important about the relationship between the Father and the Son. Yet John would probably challenge some modern ‘evangelical’ theologians as well. Namely, those who interpret his words, about Jesus being our Advocate and Atoning Sacrifice, to mean that Jesus acts like a kind of heavenly defense lawyer whenever a believer commits a sin (2:1-2). Jesus, they say, must then enter a plea before the Father about the efficacy of his sacrificial death, so that the Father, as a righteous Judge, can be just in forgiving the sinner (Med.#52). But this means that Jesus and the Father are responding in different ways to the sin of a believer, which contradicts what Jesus clearly says about the relational unity between him and the Father (Med.#59, Med.#37 & Med.#65)—also when it comes to judging people (Med.#60)! So at least in this interpretation of John's words, they too are doing what he says that false teachers do: ‘denying’ the unity in the relationship between ‘the Father and the Son’ in order to support their own theological principle.

How then do we avoid the dark path of deception? We avoid self-deception by walking in the light—by maintain a lifestyle of ongoing accountability to one another, listening to correction from respected brothers and sisters, and confessing our sins to them. We avoid being deceived by others through becoming mature in our Father's love and by acting like the adult sons and daughters that we are. For in Jesus, his Anointed One [christo], we have also received his ‘anointing’ [Gr. chrisma], by the Holy Spirit, empowering us: to know the truth; to ‘abide’ in fellowship with the Father and the Son; to walk confidently as Jesus did (in a human body) by practicing righteousness and obeying his commandments; and to discern the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of deception. None of us needs to be dependent like a child on the teaching of a spiritual parent or religious guru. Though John endearingly addresses these believers as ‘dear children’, and recognizes different levels of spiritual maturity among them, he still treats all of them as adult brothers and sisters.

Are you taking your responsibility as an adult son or daughter to practice righteousness out of relationship: with the Father, Jesus and your brothers and sisters? Or are you living as if the Gospel is a spiritual commodity? Or as if your body is the problem? Or as if you are still a spiritual child? Take time to meditate again on the whole text from John's letter at the beginning of this meditation.

Father, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Anointed One, and that through him, I received the Spirit—the anointing to walk in this body with you like Jesus did, as your adult son (daughter). (1 Jn.5:5; 4:2,13; 2:6; 3:1)

[i] As in my own translations, I also render the 2^nd person pronoun here in caps (‘YOU’) if the Greek form is plural—to show when John is addressing members of the church as a group.

[ii] Though the NRSV does not capitalize ‘Advocate’ in this text, it does do so with the same Greek word [parakleetos] in Jn.14:16 to describe the role that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit play in our lives (Med.#51).

[iii] On why I believe the Greek plural word here, tekna, should be translated as ‘sons and daughters’, see Med.#5, paragraph 6 and footnote [ii].    

[iv] John Drane, Introducing the New Testament, Lion Publishing, 1986, pp.458-459 & 21-22.