Doctrine of Anointing; 1 John 2:19
1 John
When John gets into this he
is emphasising the basis of fellowship. He says here that there were those who
“went out from us” and they “were not of us.” In other words, there is a break
in fellowship with these false teachers. There are three principles we have to
remember from our previous study of 1 John, especially in the first four
verses. First, John is going to emphasise that fellowship with God is based
first, if not exclusively, on doctrinal truth. The problem with the break in
fellowship here isn’t because of behaviour, because they have become immoral,
because they have become involved with some sort of sin; it is because they
have adopted a false view of the person of Jesus Christ. These were people who
taught that Christ really had not come in the flesh. When they denied the
physical humanity of Jesus Christ it affected a number of doctrines, not the
least of which were doctrines related to the spiritual life, because it was in
the physical humanity that Jesus Christ also struggled with every category of
testing and temptation and was a victor in that because of His reliance upon
God the Holy Spirit. And it is in that that He set the precedent for the
spiritual life of the church age. So an attack on the real humanity of Jesus
Christ is an assault on humanity in itself, an assault on Jesus Christ and the
incarnation, and it is an assault on the spiritual life of the church age. So
if we don’t have our doctrine right Christologically
we can’t have fellowship with the apostles and we can’t have fellowship with
God. John is making the point that fellowship is based on right doctrine.
Three
principles:
a)
Right doctrine
alone, though, doesn’t mean we are in fellowship.
b)
Right behaviour
alone doesn’t mean we are in fellowship.
c)
Both correct
behaviour and right doctrine are necessary to maintain fellowship with God.
The antichrists that John
mentions in verse 18 are those who had rejected the truth about Jesus’ true
humanity, and those are mentioned in the first four verses of 1 John chapter
one. The message of the gospel is what is at issue here because if Jesus is not
fully God and fully man then He does not fulfil what John says is the essence
of His Messiahship, and that is the crucial point in
the gospel, according to John 20:31. This is the essence of what John sees as
the gospel: believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the God-Man who has come into
the world, the one who has become flesh and dwelt among us. So for anyone to
deny that Jesus is the Messiah is to undercut the very content, the core
content, of the gospel.
In verse 19 John goes on to
characterise the origin of these antichrists. He says, “they
went out from us… they were not really of us…” The clause “they would have
remained with us but {they went out},” is not repeated in the original,
but it is usually added in most English translations in order to make the verse
make a little more sense when we read it. This is a fascinating verse in the
Greek because there are several little different word plays that John is very
fond of uses to make his point. What we need to pay attention to here is the
use of the pronouns they and us. Then, if we look at verse 20, we will notice
that he adds the second person plural pronoun, “But you have an anointing.” So
to get the thrust of this verse we have to pay attention to the pronouns—they,
us, we, and you.
There are two ways that we
can understand the “us” or the “we” in these verses, the first person plural. This
could refer to we Christians or us Christians; we
apostles or us apostles. We have to be consistent with the author’s use of this
first person plural pronoun all the way through. At the very beginning he did
not include his audience in the “we” or the “us.” It is only in a secondary way
that we are brought in by application, but in the primary sense he is only
talking about “we” the apostles. He says, “they went
out from us.” The “us” there is not talking about us in general; they went out
specifically from the apostolic body. This suggests that these false teachers
had some kind of historical roots back in
“They went out from us” is
the main verb of the sentence exelthan
[e)chlqan] which is
the third person plural, aorist active indicative of exerchomai [e)cerxomai]which
means to come out or to go out from. The aorist tense is a culminative
aorist which is used to stress the cessation of an act or state. John uses the
preposition ek [e)k] here. He uses it twice but it has two different
emphases. ek can emphasise
separation and source, so he uses the same preposition in both places as a sort
of play on words to get our attention and to cause us to think about just exactly
what it is he is saying. He says “they went out from us,” i.e. they separated
themselves from us, and then he says, “they were not from us.” The second use
of ek indicates source,
that they were not from the same source as us. In other words, they were
different, they did not go out from us with our blessing, with our
authorisation; they separated from us, they left us, because they had a
different doctrine. Expanded translation: “They [false teachers; antichrists]
departed from our midst, but they were not really of us because they were not
in agreement with us; for if they had been in agreement with us [and they were
not] they would have remained in fellowship with us.” That is what John is
saying in this verse.
The next clause, “for if they
had been of us.” We have an “if” clause there which is a conditional clause, a
second class condition which assumes that the condition is not true. It should
be understood as “if they had been of us, and they weren’t.” It is an
assumption of unreality. Then, “they would have continued with us.” In other
words, if they had had the same doctrines then they would have continued with the
apostles, i.e. remained in fellowship with the apostles. That is the impact of
the word meno [menw]. It is to bring in as part of its nuance the idea of
fellowship. Because they had false doctrine they could not remain in fellowship
with the apostles and, of course, they weren’t in fellowship with God. Then at
the end of the verse he gives the reason for this, and this is expressed
through a hina [i(na] clause plus the aorist passive subjunctive of phaneroo [fanerow] which means to reveal, to make manifest, to make
visible or conspicuous, or to make known. The reason this happened was in order
to in the course of time demonstrate that their false doctrine led to false or
wrong behaviour and to show that they really weren’t ever a part of us. They
never really understood the right doctrine. “… for if they had been of us [been
in agreement with us] they would have continued fellowship with us: but they
went out from us that it might be made manifest [revealed, been made
conspicuously clear] that none of them were of us.” The last phrase should be
translated “not all of them were of us.” Not all of them in
1 John
Notice two things that are
associated with the anointing in v. 27. First of all, “the anointing which you
received from Him abides [menw] in
you.” meno always relates to
something to do with fellowship with God—not positional truth but experiential
truth. This same anointing “teaches you,” so it has to
do with teaching. When we look at this verse we are going to say that this
seems to indicate the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit. But wait a minute.
Haven’t we always said that anointing only occurs one time and is not repeated
(the filling of the Holy Spirit is repeated). If we look at the Old Testament
background anointing only occurs once at the initiation of a person’s ministry
or role or function. A king is anointed once at the beginning of his reign. A
prophet is anointed once at the beginning of his ministry. A priest is anointed
once at the beginning of his ministry. So if anointing was related to teaching
and to fellowship that would seem is if it was related to the filling ministry
of the Holy Spirit in v. 27, but that is a repeated ministry; only the
indwelling ministry takes place first. Why we get into confusion here is that
we try to use a Johannine term, John’s term “anointing,”
into Paul’s terminology. Paul never uses the term “anoint,” it is only used in
these verses. Anointing here has to do with everything that the believer was
given at the point of salvation. At that point it is positional reality but it
is potential to growth based on fellowship and the filling of the Holy Spirit. To
use Paul’s terminology, it is only when we are being filled by the Holy Spirit
that that potential is activated so that we are being taught by the Holy Spirit
and we are advancing and growing in the spiritual life. So anointing for John
refers to everything that we were given potentially in relationship to the ministry
of the Holy Spirit at the point of salvation, but that potential is only
activated when we are in fellowship, in right relationship with the Holy Spirit
and studying His Word. John is reminding them in v. 20 that this anointing is
something they have, present tense. The “Holy One” is not the Holy Spirit here,
it just says “from the holy.” Then, correctly translated: NKJV “and
you know all things.” Why is it that you can say that you know all things?
Remember what Jesus promised the disciples in John 14:26 NASB “But
the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My
name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I
said to you.” John 16:13 NASB “But when He, the Spirit of truth,
comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own
initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you
what is to come.”
What we see here is “you know all things” is not talking about the fact that
they know everything, it is that the anointing gives us the potential to
understand everything in Scripture.