Whoever Says “I Know Him”

Some words must be handled with great care, and antichrist is one of them. This claim deserves a fair hearing: “Calling it antichrist to teach that the commandments cannot be kept goes too far. The antichrist is simply one who denies that Yeshua is the Messiah.”

That sounds careful and reasonable. It does not throw a frightening word around, and the definition it offers is not invented. It comes from Scripture; John wrote it.

We will not argue with that definition. We will read it alongside the rest of what John wrote in the same letter.

The Definitions Page

Every serious contract has a page near the front headed “Definitions.” “In this agreement, ‘the Tenant’ means…” “In this agreement, ‘the Premises’ means…” Once a word has been defined there, no one reaches for an ordinary dictionary to decide what it means in the contract, because the writer has already defined it. If a dispute ever comes to court, the judge will turn to that page first.

John’s first letter works in the same way. He defines his own words and uses them consistently. To learn what John means by antichrist, the place to look is not a film or a novel but John himself.

Who Is the Liar?

This is the verse on which the claim rests:

1 John 2:22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Yeshua is the Messiah? This is the antichristos ἀντίχριστος an-tee'-khris-tos(anti-anointed-one) — the one who denies the Father and the Son.

John’s question is not “Who is the antichrist?” but “Who is the liar?” The word is pseustes ψεύστης psyoos-tace', a liar. The antichristos (ἀντίχριστος) is the adversary of the anointed one, the one who stands against Messiah, and the action that marks him is arneomai ἀρνέομαι ar-neh'-om-ahee, to deny.

John has told us, then, that the antichrist is the liar, the one who denies. The next question must be whom John calls a liar, and he does not leave us guessing. Three more times in this letter he says that a person lies or is a liar, and each time the sentence has the same shape.

1 John 1:6 If we say we have koinonia κοινωνία koy-nohn-ee'-ah(fellowship) with Him while we walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth).

1 John 2:4 Whoever says "I know Him" but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the aletheia(truth) is not in such a person.

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

The pattern is plain. Each time, someone says one thing and lives another. The mouth claims fellowship while the feet walk in darkness. The mouth says “I know Him” while the life does not keep His commandments. The mouth says “I love God” while the heart hates a brother. For John, that is what a liar is: one who says but does not do.

Denial Without Saying “No”

Now John’s definitions can be put together, the way a judge would read a contract.

Whoever says “I know Him” but does not keep His commandments is a liar (1 John 2:4). The liar is the one who denies, and this is the antichristos (1 John 2:22).

For John, then, denying that Yeshua is the Messiah is not only a matter of saying aloud, “Yeshua is not the Messiah.” To say “I know Him” while not keeping His commandments is also what John calls a lie and a denial.

Paul says the same thing:

Titus 1:16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and adokimoi(unapproved, unverified) for any good deed.

The word for deny is the same arneomai that John used. A person can confess God with his lips and deny Him with his life. Paul does not say that the denial was spoken in words; he says that it happened “by their deeds.”

The Name of the Man

Scripture also gives a name to the man of the last days. Paul calls him “the man of sin” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). A few lines later he says that “the mystery of anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah(Torah-lessness) is already at work,” and he calls the man himself “that lawless one” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8), in Greek ho anomos ὁ ἄνομος an'-om-os, the one without law. We will look at those verses closely in Chapter 27. As we saw in Chapter 3, anomia is Torah-lessness, and John put it in a single line: “sin is anomia(Torah-lessness)” (1 John 3:4). The man of sin and the lawless one, therefore, are not two different names but one name said in two ways. His name is what he does. He lives as though God’s Torah did not apply to him, and in the end he “takes his seat as God in the temple of God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4).

“Lord, Lord”

When Yeshua describes the people He sends away on the last day, He uses the same word. We will read that passage in full in Chapter 26, so here we need only see who these people are. They call Him “Lord, Lord.” They prophesied in His name, they cast out demons, and they did “many dynamis δύναμις doo'-nam-is(miracles, power).” They did not deny Him with their mouths. Yet the sentence that sends them away is this: “depart from Me, you who work the anomia(Torah-lessness)” (Matthew 7:23).

John adds a warning of his own:

1 John 3:7-8 Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness) is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the diabolos διάβολος dee-ab'-ol-os(devil, accuser, slanderer), because the diabolos(devil, accuser, slanderer) has been sinning from the beginning; the Son of God appeared for this purpose — to destroy the works of the diabolos(devil, accuser, slanderer).

It is the one who practices righteousness who is righteous, not the one who merely says the right words.

Only the Names the Text Gives

This study puts no label on any person, and it calls no one an antichrist. It reads only the names that the text itself has given.

The one who says “I know Him” and does not keep His commandments is a liar (1 John 2:4). The liar is the antichrist (1 John 2:22). The man of the last days is the man of sin, the lawless one (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 8). Those driven out on the last day are those who work Torah-lessness (Matthew 7:23).

Set beside those four verses the teaching that says, “The commandments cannot be kept anyway, so you need not keep them,” and ask on which side that teaching stands. The answer does not rest on our own opinion. These four verses have already settled it.

That is hard to read, and many will answer at once that love would say it more softly, or not at all, and that the loving thing is to embrace those who teach wrongly rather than to correct them. That objection deserves a hearing of its own.