Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
1 John 2:26–27
“I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.”
Having exhorted his readers to let the gospel abide in them as the means of their abiding in the Son and the Father (1 John 2:24–25), the Apostle John brings this section of his argument to a close in today’s passage by returning to the matter of the false teachers and to the resources available for resisting them. The anointing of the Spirit, given to every believer, is itself a teacher that confirms the truth and exposes the lie.
“I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you,” John explains (v. 26). The previous verses, with their warnings about antichrists and their pointed assurances of his readers’ standing, have all served this single pastoral aim. John writes to fortify his people against the deceivers who continue, even after their departure from the community, to press their false doctrines on the faithful.
Yet John quickly returns to the encouraging note he sounded earlier: “But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him” (v. 27). This statement has sometimes been misread as a kind of spiritual self-sufficiency, as if every believer needed no teacher beyond the Spirit’s inward witness. That cannot be John’s meaning, for John himself is teaching his readers in this very letter, and pastors and elders throughout the New Testament are commanded to teach the church (Eph. 4:11–14; 2 Tim. 2:2).
John’s point is rather that his readers do not need new teachers offering allegedly higher truths beyond what they have already received. The anointing that they have, the gift of the Holy Spirit, confirms them in the Apostolic gospel and exposes teaching that contradicts it. They are not at the mercy of self-proclaimed experts who claim access to esoteric knowledge. The Spirit who indwells them bears witness to the truth, the same truth that has been faithfully delivered through the Apostles’ preaching and writing.
The proper response to such gracious provision is found in the closing words of the verse: “Abide in him.” All that John has said about doctrine, about the antichrists, about the Spirit’s anointing, leads finally to this simple charge. Stay where you have been placed by grace. Continue in fellowship with Christ. Hold fast to the gospel. The Christian life is not a constant search for some better truth but a settled abiding in the truth that has already been given.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The Holy Spirit indwells every believer to confirm us in the truth and to keep us from drifting into error. Let us not despise this gift by neglecting Scripture or wandering after novel teachings. As the Spirit’s anointing has taught us, so let us abide in Christ today and every day.
For further study
- Isaiah 8:20
- Jeremiah 23:16–22
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 43–44
- 1 Thessalonians 1
- Isaiah 45–50
- 1 Thess. 2:1–3:5