Note: On Saturdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ?This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. (1 John 2:22, NRSVCE)
The author of 1 John had some specific liars in mind. They didn’t deny that Jesus had existed—but they did not believe He was the Messiah sent by God. That made them antichrists, those who denied the Father and the Son, for one could not believe in one without the other, the author argued.
And at some level, in the abstract, we as Christians get that. After all, if we
didn’t believe Jesus was the Christ, what would be the point in following Him? And surely, we reject the antichrist, Jesus’s enemy.
Except, maybe, when we don’t.
Maybe it’s a shorter path than we want to acknowledge from thinking we can plan and organize our lives better than Jesus can to embracing the antichrist. Maybe it’s a shorter path than we want to acknowledging from questioning why God allows bad things to happen to us and our loved ones to embracing the antichrist. Maybe it’s a shorter path than we want to acknowledge from doubting our value or earthly purpose to embracing the antichrist.
Who is the liar?
