Friday, July 15, 2005

Because You Know the Truth

I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. (1 John 2:21)
Here is another reason John writes his epistle: Because you know the truth, and that no lie is of the truth. Where does this knowledge of the truth come from? From knowing Jesus. You see, truth is personal. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Through faith in Jesus, we have fellowship with the Father.

Not only that, but we have an anointing from God that pertains to the truth. In 1 John 2:20, John said, “But you have an anointing form the Holy One, and you know all things.”

An anointing is an empowerment from God that lifts burdens and destroys yokes (Isaiah 10:27). This anointing is a work of the Holy Spirit. “The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD” (Isaiah 11:2).

John’s readers were being led by Gnostic teachers to think that they need some special, esoteric knowledge in order to really know the truth. Not so, says John: “I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know the truth, and that no lie is of the truth.”

The recipient’s of John’s letter not only knew the truth, but they knew how to discern between what is the truth and what is the lie, for they had come into fellowship with the Father through faith in the Son, and they have received an anointing of the Holy Spirit to free them from the bondage of deception.

In other words, what they needed, they already had. They simply need to trust the work of God in their lives.

Now here was the key for discerning between the truth they had received and the lie they were hearing from false teachers: “Who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).

What does this have to do with the anointing? Everything. It is not readily apparent in the English text, but if you read it in the original Greek text, you would quickly see that “anointing” and “Christ” have the same root. “Christ” actually means “Anointed One.” The one who denies that Jesus is the Anointed One, he is anti-christ, or anti-anointing.

The Gnostic teachers, believing that flesh is evil, denied that Jesus was the Anointed One. They rejected His humanity and thus denied both the Father and the Son. They were therefore antichrist and of the lie.

So we see it is the anointing that we receive from the Holy Spirit that helps us discern the truth from the lie, and identify those who are against the anointing. For those who are against the Anointed One are the same ones who are against the anointing.

If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, you not only have fellowship with the Father, you also have an anointing, a witness from the Holy Spirit to help you discern the truth from the lie. Whoever denies that Jesus is the Anointed One of God is of the lie, not of the truth.

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