You have an Anointing

1 John 2v20-21

19^th June 2020

For the last three weeks, we've been considering these words:

1 John 2v18-19
Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

We've seen that:

• The last hour includes the time when Jesus and the original 12 apostles were on earth. So either the last hour was the period before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, or the last hour is the whole church age.
• John is the only Bible writer who mentions the antichrist by name, and he says nothing to suggest that the antichrist is some major historical figure, but the antichrist is identified by many as the "man of lawlessness" mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4.
• The antichrists are those people who left true churches to join false churches.

We can mow move on to study:

1 John 2v20-21
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.

Throughout this letter, John is writing about two groups of people: true Christians and fake Christians. The fake Christians used to be part of the community of the church, but were never genuinely members of the church, because only true Christians can be members of God's church.

John's writing to the people who stayed in the true churches. It must have been unsettling for them when the others left. Perhaps some of them wondered if maybe John was wrong and the ones who left were right. John wrote this letter to reassure them that they are indeed true Christians. He says:

Verses 20-21
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.

Some people distinguish between what is truly the church and what only appears to be the church by using the terms "the church invisible" and "the church visible". These overlap a great deal, but they are very different. The church invisible is the totality of all the people predestined by God to be saved, who have believed the Gospel, and been forgiven, born again, and adopted as God's children. The church visible is those people who self-identify as Christians, and who attend church worship meetings.

Of course, many people are in both groups. They've been born again, they're saved, and they're members of a church. But there are many people who are in one group but not in the other. There are many true Christians who are not members of a church, and don't even go to church worship meetings. For one reason or another, these members of the church invisible are not part of the church visible. And there are many members of the church visible who are not Christians. They come to the meetings. They pray the prayers and sing the songs. They try to be nice. They may think they're Christians, but they're not. They haven't been born again. They're not part of the church invisible.

These terms, "church invisible" and "church visible" are useful, but the truth is that "the church invisible" is simply the church, and the part of the church visible that is not also part of the church invisible is not the church. Either you've been born again or you haven't.

Verses 18 and 19 talked about people who are not part of the church invisible – that is, the church. They're not Christians. They were once part of the church visible and now they've left, to form what I choose to call an anti-church. John calls these people "antichrists", as we've seen.

The Greek word "Christ" is a translation of the Hebrew word "Messiah" and they both mean "Anointed One". The name "Jesus Christ" means "Jesus the Anointed One". John tells the members of the true church – the church invisible – that they're anointed by our Heavenly Father. They are like Jesus – anointed ones. Just as Jesus is the one true Son of God, and we are all sons of God, so Jesus is the one true Anointed One – the Messiah – and we are all anointed ones. We're Christians. We're like Christ, but less so.

When John says we have an anointing, he means that we've received the Holy Spirit of God. As Isaiah says in Isaiah 61:1, "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me". Every Christian has the Holy Spirit, and every non-Christian doesn't have the Holy Spirit. We have God's anointing and they don't.

In some ways, Christians are just like non-Christians. We eat, and drink, and sleep. We feel and we think. We sin. We get things wrong. Our actions, our thoughts and our understanding are imperfect. But in other ways, Christians are not like non-Christians. We're forgiven. We're in contact, in relationship, with Creator God. We're destined for eternal glory. We're saved. And we have the Holy Spirit – we're anointed by God.

And because we Christians have the Holy Spirit, we know the truth. Paul explains this in:

1 Corinthians 2:12-14
We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in Spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

A Christian and an atheist, who have similar intellectual capabilities, and educational and cultural backgrounds, can read the Bible and see utterly different things in it. We Christians see the Gospel of Christ. They don't. We see the sovereignty and perfection of God. They don't. We see the difference between good and bad, defined by God's law. They don't. We see mercy and grace. They don't. In short, we see the truth, and they don't. They can't, because they haven't been anointed with Holy Spirit.

This doesn't mean we're better than them, or more worthy than them; it just means we've received such mercy from God the Father that He's chosen to reveal His truth to us by the Holy Spirit. How blessed we are!

You know the truth. Not perfectly, but you know the truth. You know Jesus is the Son of God. You know He died on the cross to pay for your sins. You know He rose from the dead three days later. You know He ascended into heaven. You know He sits at the right hand of God, in glory and authority. You don't know these things because you sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper and worked it all out. You don't know them because you're cleverer than your atheistic neighbours. You know these things because the Holy Spirit has convinced you that they're true.

John says that "no lie comes from the truth". Everything the Holy Spirit teaches us from Scripture is true, without exception, even if the world tells you otherwise. Jesus promised us:

John 16:13a
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.

We need to address the reality that Christians disagree about what Scripture teaches. I'll talk about that next time.