Many Antichrists

The Apostle John sharply contrasts the world that is passing away and those who do the will of God and so abide forever (1 John 2:17). In today’s passage, the Apostle takes up a related theme. The “last hour” in which his readers find themselves has been marked by the rise of false teachers within the church, men whom John calls “antichrists.” Their departure from the orthodox community has caused distress among the faithful, and John writes to interpret these events for his troubled people.

John addresses his readers tenderly as “children” and warns them that “it is the last hour” (v. 18). The “last hour,” or “last days,” is the final period of redemptive history that began with the first coming of Christ and will conclude with His return (see Acts 2:17; Heb. 1:2). One mark of this final epoch is the appearance of those who oppose Christ from within the visible church.

John acknowledges that his readers had heard “that antichrist is coming” (1 John 2:18). The early church evidently expected a final and preeminent figure of opposition who would arise before the Lord’s return, what Paul calls the “man of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:3). John does not deny this expectation. But he insists that already in his own day “many antichrists have come,” lesser figures who exhibit the same fundamental opposition to Christ. Their appearance is itself evidence that the last hour has dawned.

John explains the perplexing departure of these false teachers: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). The fact that they departed is itself the proof of their condition. Had they truly belonged to the people of God, they would have remained. John Calvin observes of such persons that “they who fall away had never been thoroughly imbued with the knowledge of Christ, but had only a light and a transient taste of it.”

This text speaks a clear word about the perseverance of the saints. Those who finally and decisively abandon the faith demonstrate that they had never truly possessed it. True believers may stumble, doubt, and even wander, but they will not in the end forsake the Christ who has laid hold of them (John 10:28–29; Phil. 1:6). The painful defection of the false teachers thus served a providential purpose, exposing a divide that only time and pressure could uncover.