First John

I John 2:18-23, The Father and the Son

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: I John 2:18-23. The Father and The Son

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 5 of 16

Track: #5

Year:

Dictation Name: RR308C5

[Speaker] Let us worship God.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands a pure heart, who has not lifteth up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of His salvation. Let us pray.

Our most gracious God and heavenly Father we come before You in humility and in thankfulness. It is only because of Your grace that we can approach You, it is only because of Your grace that we have hope in this life and the next, it is only because of Your grace that we have meaning and purpose in our life. It is only because of your grace that our lives have significance. We pray that you would encourage us in faithfulness to your revealed word. Help us to understand how we could submit ourselves to you in faith and in obedience. We pray that You would give us direction so that our actions might in some way further your honor and glory. We pray that you would encourage us, we sometimes fail You in word, thought, and deed, we pray that You would strengthen our faith so that we might be able to serve You. We thank You for Your word, we thank You for this time when we can come together to study it, to understand it and its implications for our lives. We pray that you would help us not to think of it as just a word for our Spirits, but as a word from the eternal sovereign God of the entire universe, a word that changes men and nations. We pray that You would bless us in this time we have together, we thank You for the common unity we have as Your children. We pray that You would encourage us in our home life, strengthen our families, protect our children from all the temptations of youth, we pray that you would encourage them to be every faithful to you and to Your covenant. We pray that You would encourage us in our callings, we pray that You would give us a sense of reward of having accomplished something and doing it well because we do it as to the Lord. We pray that You would encourage us now in this time we have together, we pray this in Christ our Savior’s name, amen.

The scripture for this morning’s sermon is I John chapter 2 verses 18-23. I John Chapter 2, verses 18-23 and the title is “The Father and the Son.”

“18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

20 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.

21 I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.”

[Rushdoony] As we have seen New Testament Greek is unusual in that unlike other languages instead of having one word for love it has three words. Eros, meaning erotic love; Phileo meaning ordinary, human, brotherly love as in Philadelphia, Phil- love, adelphos – brother; and third agape, God’s love, a love that is rarely referred to in the Greek language apart from the New Testament. It is almost equal to grace except that it tells us of the love of God which passes all human understanding and has no reason except sheer grace.

Now in verse 18 John tells us “18 Little children, it is the last time:” The language there is strange to us because we’re not familiar with the Greek, but “little children” here refers to adults young and old, it refers to them as little children because they are new in the faith, they are like little children. We would have a comparable situation if today one were addressing a large group of people, none of whom had ever read the Bible or knew anything about it. The person speaking would have every right in the world in terms of the Bible to call them “little children.” Of course we don’t have the humility to take that nowadays, so it isn’t a common usage. But in John’s day John could be addressing intellectuals far in advance of him in their education but not in their knowledge of God and His word, and so they would be addressed as little children. The purpose would be to remind them of their status, they were not philosophers listening to this nobody, they were little children because had blessed John with the knowledge, not they themselves.

Now we have these three words and they are important for us because then and now one of the most popular forms of salvation was by humanistic love. People believe that they can save people by their love. More than once in the past few years as we have read about some high school killing, the subject of the absent of love in the lives of these children is brought up. And yet the truth is they are spoiled most the time, they’ve had too much of the wrong kind of love, but it has been popular over the centuries to over stress this matter of humanistic love as though all that man needs is a little more love and he would be in paradise on earth.

Well, John goes on in verse 18 to say “ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” Well anti-Christ means in place of Christ, it can mean against Christ but basically it means another savior, another Christ, someone who is presented as the true savior. We think of it in terms of enmity, it has that connotation but it is secondary, it’s basic meaning is “in place of Christ.” Well, then he goes on to say there are many anti-Christ’s, that many other are claiming to proclaim the true gospel, and in effect to be the true Christ. Not only so, this makes it obvious this is the last time. Now this doesn’t mean that we are in the end of time, but the last time, the last age of history with the coming of Christ, and with the world increasingly filling up with people who pretend to be the true saviors instead of Christ, even though they may not use the name of Christ they have the plan of salvation. It can be love, it can be knowledge, or science, it can be any number of things but they have a plan whereby man is going to be his own Savior.

Then John in verse 19 goes on to say “19 They went out from us, but they were not of us;” they were never of Christ, so however much they may have claimed for a time to be believers in Him, they were not. Consider, for example, the impact of the first chapter of John’s gospel verses 1-18, it begins “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Well this immediately attracted all the philosophic attention of the day. It spoke of Jesus Christ as a very revelation of God, that He is God. Now naturally the minute John set forth as bluntly as he did those facts in John 1:1-18, the ungodly used them to mean something else so that there were many Christ’s, many who in effect claimed to be the true savior, or to have the true version of what the savior was. And so Jesus Christ, the one John had known, was being separated from all that he had been. Consider one thing in our time, He is separated from His law so that we have a high percentage acting as though the law does not exist, it’s been done away with.

So what we are told is very clear, “they went out from us, but they were not of us for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” So John says one of the first things we have to recognize is that many, many so-called Christians are not Christians at all, they never have been, they use the name of Christ but they are not of Christ.

Then in verse 20 “But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” Well, there’s a great deal of debate about this verse which is altogether wrong. Who is the Holy One? Is it the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit? What silly talk, it’s the trinity; it’s God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and this kind of discussion, and in some commentaries there’s a great deal said about who is the Holy One, and then nothing about “and ye know all things.” Now that’s a tremendous statement, that is where we should fix our minds, what does it mean that we know all things? We don’t know every fact in the universe, we never shall, but we know all things in principle. We know that the triune God created the heavens and the earth; we know that this triune God has redeemed us, has made us a new creation, and has given us a promise of eternity. It’s a magnificent verse; “ye” or “we” “know all things.” As a result we can face the world in this confidence. The people we face may have a tremendous amount knowledge of this or that area of life, or of history, or of science, but they do not know that God is the creator. We know all things because we know in essence the meaning of all things, and therefore we have the essential knowledge.

“21 I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.” I’m writing this letter to you, John says, because ye know the truth, ye know that Christ is God incarnate, you know the Father and the Spirit. This means that you know the truth, and those who do not know what you know are liars and not of the truth, they may have a hundred times more learning than you do, but learning is not necessarily wisdom, it is not necessarily knowledge, and so we are surrounded by a world of liars. They do not know that Jesus Christ is the truth “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Our Lord declares that he is truth, and if you know Him you know the truth about creation. But you deny the Father and the Son if you deny that He is the truth.

“23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.” You cannot be a Christian and deny the Father, nor believe in the Father and deny the Son. The two are united together with the Holy Ghost and the Trinity, and so John says you had better recognize that the essence is not loving your neighbor, which is fine, that doesn’t save you. That does not make you a child of God, there is so much that you can say and do, that may be good in and of itself, but it is not worth much as against the knowledge of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We are therefore to believe in the Son, to believe in Jesus Christ as a member of the trinity. If we do not place Him there, we are then believers in anti-Christ.

Now let’s go a little further with that. We are believers in anti-Christ, well one in place of Christ. IT means therefore that instead of believing in the Holy Trinity, three persons totally equal, one God, we instead believe in someone who can take the place of Christ, of God the Father, of God the Holy Spirit, and who is that person? Why the word “anti-Christ” tells us. The word “love” tells us, it’s our love; and we therefore become the Saviors, that’s the essence of this. So that instead of believing in Jesus Christ we believe in ourselves, we believe that man can save himself, man can be in the place of Christ, that’s what anti-Christ means, and that’s why at one point we are told there are many anti-Christ’s.

Now, way back in the New Testament we are told there are many anti-Christ, in other words many who believe themselves to be capable of saving themselves and especially of saving others. They have replaced God, this is why the term “love” is so important, why we have to understand it is agape, it is God’s grace, and why it is Christ, not anyone, least of all ourselves, in the place of Christ. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word. We thank Thee that our faith is fixed on Thee, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Teach us therefore also to know that it is not our love, but Thine that redeems us, for Thou did so love the world that Thou didst give Thine only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. We thank Thee our Father that we live and move and have our being in Thee. Bless us in Thy service, in Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Rush, verses 20 & 27 both seem to be teaching similar things, verse 27, which you’ll get to later, refers to the anointing that we’ve received, similar to the unction, is that not correct?

[Rushdoony] Would you read the verse in it’s…

[Audience member] Verse 27 speaks of the anointing which ye have received “of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you:” that seems very similar to verse 20 that we have an unction, I’m not sure it’s the same Greek but it seems to be teaching similar things, right?

[Rushdoony] Very specifically here it is the Holy Spirit.

[Audience member] What I was wondering, does it seem to be that in verse 20 he says “ye have an unction, and ye know all things” that’s God has given to the saints a supernatural knowledge to preserve them from being seduced by these anti-Christ’s?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] If that is the case, and it seems to be, is it an inference that those who were disciples or followers of false teachers, you know Robert Schuler, {?} Norman Vincent Peele {?}, we can pretty well assure ourselves they’re not believers, is that?

[Rushdoony] Yes. They may become believers in time, but when they follow false teachers they are not because “ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all thigns” you know them in principle, you may not know everything that a theologian can teach about Jesus, but in principle you know that He is God the Son, that He is your Savior.

As you can see John is step-by-step laying a groundwork which says “not love, but Christ is the Savior” and it’s strange that so many see this as a kind of gospel of love, and what he is doing is telling us it’s not humanistic love, it is God’s grace, nothing more, nothing less.

In the fourth chapter a lot of things are made clear. First of all we are told that, well in the third chapter, fourth verse, “ Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.” So you have a clear-cut statement of the law. Then in the fourth chapter we are told that the Savior of the world, verse 14, is God the Son and therefore it’s not our love, but God the Son, and it is God’s love in us that is to be manifest in others, verse 11, fourth Chapter. “Beloved if God so loved us we ought also to love one another.” In other words, we have a pattern, we are to follow the pattern, it’s not anything we do, it’s not our love, but it’s a love God showed towards us, and we are now to show it towards others.

Any other comments about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Mark, try again.

[Audience member] Or I could do it afterwards.

[A different audience member, addressing Rush] he wants to know if he can say something

[Rushdoony] Could you come here and tell me?

[Audience member] He wants to know if he can say something about Doctor Schuler.

[Rushdoony] Oh sure.

[Audience member] What I told you, I agree with the background of both Dr. Schuler and also Norman Vincent Peale, whom I noticed as I listened years ago, seldom mentioned Jesus Christ in their philosophy. I’ve noted something with Dr. Schuler, and the subject of this is God restoring people, the possibility of restoring. You remember that he had this aneurism and was near death in {?}, I just noticed since then that he is mentioning Christ, and he says “I’m a follower of Jesus Christ” and he’s encouraging this audience, which he reaches, the Hollywood set you would call it, and from the media, that we would love to see reached by the gospel. He has changed and I have been hopeful that the Lord is working in his life, he has centered himself about Christ, he’s the one that made the statement on, it was memorial, that said “freedom is evil without the Lord.” Real profound statement and that just about summarizes that. He also said that on this, now I’m not emphasizing him, or others that I’ve known {?} on this subject of school killings he said that “we are now experiencing what we saw starting 30 years or more ago, the families not taking their children to Sunday School, so now under thirty years later we are experiencing the results.”

My prayer for him is that he reach these people that come, as I said, of the Hollywood Los Angeles area, they all seem to be responding positively to that, quite hopeful.

I listen to others, Kennedy..

[Rushdoony] I missed parts of it, do you want to comment on it at all? Very good.

Well, as you can see John instead of giving us a religion of love here gives us Jesus Christ, the trinity, and that’s why it is so strange that people have turned this into an anti-gospel, a gospel of love, not Christ, and it has been a major problem because in many, many liberal churches the essential gospel is I John and they don’t know what it says. Well let us conclude now with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that from all eternity Thou hast had us in mind and throughout all eternity we shall be thine. Bless us now by Thy grace, grant us Thy peace. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.