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1 John 2:18-27 - Abiding in the Son in the Last Hour

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St John has just refused the Church a heart trained by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Now he names a danger that can sound more spiritual than those desires: voices that loosen the confession of the Son. The last hour is already upon the Church, not because a calendar has been decoded, but because Christ has come, died, risen, and poured out the Spirit, and falsehood now shows itself against that light. St John is not arming the parish to hunt enemies. He is teaching the Church to remain in the truth received from the beginning.

Discernment in the Last Hour (1 John 2:18-23)

18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. 19 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 they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. 21 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. 22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

“Little children, it is the last hour.” The address is tender, and the claim is urgent. St John is not handing the Church a puzzle for predicting dates. The Greek phrase names a present condition: it is the last hour, and he repeats the phrase at both ends of the verse so that the recognition cannot be missed.1 The decisive light has already appeared in the Incarnate Son. Because He has come, denial of Him is no longer a private opinion about religion. It is resistance to the One in whom eternal life has been revealed.

St John first recalls what the believers have heard: “the Antichrist is coming.” Then he turns the singular expectation into a present plural crisis: “even now many antichrists have come.” The Greek perfect presents them as having arisen, with a resulting present condition.2 Speculation about one future figure is not abolished, but it is restrained. The pastoral work of the hour is to recognize what is already contrary to Christ.

That test is defined by the passage itself. “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.” The danger is Christological and Trinitarian before it is political or cultural. To deny that Jesus is the Christ is to deny the Son; to deny the Son is to lose the Father as well. Confession of the Son is communion with the Father. A spirituality that wants the Father while setting the Incarnate Son aside is already a lie, however devout its vocabulary may sound.

St Augustine keeps the word close to the ground: “For antichrist in our tongue means, contrary to Christ.”3 He will not let the label become a slogan. He turns it into self-examination: “Let the tongue keep still for a little while, ask the life.”4 A person may say orthodox words while living against the Christ those words name. The passage still has a public doctrinal edge. Some had left the apostolic fellowship and denied the Son. Augustine’s counsel does not erase that history. It prevents the Church from using truth only as a weapon against others while leaving its own heart unexamined.

“They went out from us, but they were not of us.” The crisis is an intra-community rupture, not an invasion by strangers. Some who had been associated with the apostolic fellowship departed, and their departure made visible what was already unstable. St John explains the secession; he does not invite the parish to treat every hard departure, every wounded conscience, or every painful disagreement as proof of reprobation. The controlling issue in this unit is denial of the Son and rupture from the confession received from the beginning. The faithful response is therefore abiding, not panic, and discernment, not the thrill of accusation.

Against the departure stands a gift: “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.” The Greek noun chrisma means anointing or unction.5 St John is not flattering private brilliance. He is reassuring the baptized community that the Holy One has given them the Spirit, so they are not orphans before deceivers. The NKJV wording “you know all things” must not be pressed into individual omniscience. The next verse immediately narrows the knowledge: “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.” What they know is the truth already received. Some Greek witnesses read a communal form, “you all know,” which would underline the whole church rather than private mastery; either way, verse 21 keeps the claim from becoming spiritual self-sufficiency.6

“No lie is of the truth.” Falsehood is not a creative variant of Christian faith. It does not share the same root. The Church does not need to treat every fashionable reinterpretation of Jesus as if it might still be a deeper form of the same gospel. St John writes because the truth is already known, and because a lie cannot be baptized by sincerity alone.

The Church hears the heart of this warning in Paschal time. In the Coptic lectionary, 1 John 2:18-23 is the Catholic Epistle for Tuesday of the third week of the Holy Fifty Days, set near the light of Christ and bold witness in the Spirit.7 Discernment therefore belongs to risen life. The last hour is serious, but it is not a season for terror. Christ has overcome, and the Spirit guards the confession of the Son among those who remain.

Abiding in What Was Heard from the Beginning (1 John 2:24-27)

24 Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that He has promised us—eternal life. 26 These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. 27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.

The remedy is not novelty. “Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning.” The apostolic word must remain in the believers so that the believers remain in the Son and in the Father. The Greek vocabulary of remaining runs through the whole unit: those who left would have remained if they had truly belonged; the received word must remain; the faithful remain in the Son and Father; the anointing remains and teaches them to remain.8 St John’s answer to antichrist is remaining, not decoding.

What was “heard from the beginning” is the apostolic proclamation of the Incarnate Son, not a private memory of spiritual excitement. Earlier in the letter, the beginning is the manifested Life whom the witnesses heard, saw, and handled. Continuity with that proclamation is the Church’s protection. A voice that offers a fresher Jesus, a less demanding Christ, or a spirituality detached from the flesh of the Son is asking the heart to trade the beginning for a counterfeit.

The promise attached to this abiding is enormous: “And this is the promise that He has promised us—eternal life.” Discernment is not cold doctrinal policing. Truth here is the path of communion. To remain in the Son and the Father is to remain in the life God has promised. Error is dangerous because it severs people from that life, not merely because it spoils an argument.

St John then names the pressure plainly: “These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.” The Greek present participle portrays active leading astray, not a merely theoretical possibility.9 Someone is pulling. The letter itself is pastoral intervention while the redirection is underway. The Church still needs that honesty. Deception often arrives as insight, liberation, sophistication, or spiritual confidence that no longer needs the body of Christ, the flesh of Jesus, repentance, or love of the brethren.

Then comes the verse most easily twisted: “But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you.” St John is teaching in the very sentence that says the anointing teaches. He cannot mean the abolition of apostolic instruction or the Church’s teachers. He means that the faithful do not need the deceivers’ alternative curriculum. The same anointing that abides in them is true and is not a lie, and it has already taught them to remain in Christ.

St Augustine hears the mystery without contempt for human words: “The sound of our words strikes the ears, the Master is within.”10 The external teacher can admonish; Christ by the Spirit teaches the heart. That is the opposite of religious isolation. It is the Church’s confidence that the Spirit makes the apostolic word living within the baptized. Augustine also joins unction to charity: “the invisible unction is the Holy Ghost; the invisible unction is that charity.”11 Discernment that becomes proud, cold, or merciless has already drifted from the anointing it claims.

St Cyril of Jerusalem receives the same language within the Church’s sacramental life after baptism. Speaking of the holy chrism, he says, “Keep This unspotted: for it shall teach you all things, if it abide in you, as you have just heard declared by the blessed John.”12 And again: “For this holy thing is a spiritual safeguard of the body, and salvation of the soul.”13 Cyril does not turn 1 John into a private mystical handbook. He places the anointing inside baptismal life, the gift of the Spirit, and perseverance in what John taught. The later rite does not exhaust every first-century nuance of the noun, but it shows how the Church has long heard this promise: the Spirit guards and heals within ecclesial life.

The NKJV ends with assurance: “just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.” Some Greek witnesses place a present command, “abide in Him,” at the close.14 The wider passage already holds both notes together. Verse 24 commands the received word to remain and promises that those in whom it remains will remain in the Son and the Father. Exhortation and assurance are not rivals. The Spirit teaches the Church to stay, and remaining is itself a grace.

The Coptic lectionary also hears the abiding and anointing material in other placements, including 1 John 2:20-25 at the Wedding of Cana and the abiding section within Kiahk readings that include 2:24-27.15 Those settings join truth and anointing to the manifestation of Christ’s glory and to the Church’s expectant hearing of the Word. They should not be stretched into a claim that the whole session range is one fixed feast reading. The safer teaching point is simpler: the Church repeatedly hears this material around confession of the Son, the Spirit’s gift, abiding, and eternal life.

The path of the passage is therefore clear. Recognize the hour by the crisis of confession. Do not romanticize departure from apostolic fellowship. Receive the anointing as the Spirit’s gift within the Church. Let what was heard from the beginning remain. Confess the Son and so have the Father. Refuse the voices that lead astray. Abide in Him, for the promise is eternal life.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Refuse the excitement of identifying enemies, and examine where you are becoming contrary to Christ. Antichrist language can feed a hunger to name villains. St John defines the danger by denial of the Son and rupture from the truth. Before diagnosing others, ask where your own confession is loosening: in speech that hedges the Incarnation, in habits that contradict the Christ you name, in contempt for the brethren, or in a spirituality that wants God while bypassing Jesus Christ come in the flesh. Bring that place to confession. Truth that never turns toward repentance has already begun to serve pride.

Stay with what you heard from the beginning when a voice offers a more convenient Christ. Deception often flatters the desire for a faith with less Cross, less Church, less repentance, or less embodied obedience. When a book, teacher, feed, or inner rationalization begins to detach Jesus from the apostolic confession, return to the beginning: the Life manifested, the Son acknowledged, the Father known through Him. Read the Gospel. Stand in the liturgy. Ask a trusted father of confession. Remaining can look ordinary. Novelty often looks brilliant. St John prefers the ordinary faithfulness that keeps eternal life.

Receive the anointing as communion, not as a license to despise teachers or abandon the Church. The Spirit abides in the baptized and teaches them to remain. That gift does not make a person self-sufficient. It makes a person teachable before Christ within His Body. If “I need no one to teach me” has become a defense of isolation, resentment, or private certainty, the verse is being turned against its own purpose. Return to the Eucharist, to Scripture heard in the Church, and to counsel that can correct you. The inward Master does not abolish the apostolic word; He makes it alive.

Let discernment end in charity rather than in suspicion as an identity. Augustine joins the invisible unction to the Holy Spirit and to charity. A heart that is always hunting falsehood but rarely praying for the deceived, rarely repenting of its own hardness, and rarely clinging to Christ in love has not yet understood this passage. Ask for the Spirit’s protection, then ask for a softened heart. Truth without love becomes another form of the worldliness already condemned: the pride of being right.

Hold the promise of eternal life when faithfulness feels costly. Abiding can mean remaining in a hard obedience, a quiet parish fidelity, a refused compromise, or a friendship that will not bless a lie. St John does not leave the Church with only a warning. He leaves it with a promise: eternal life. When remaining feels like loss, name the promise in prayer. The last hour is not only a time of danger. It is the time in which the Son gives life to those who remain in Him.

Footnotes

  1. Greek eschatē hōra estin, “it is the last hour,” repeated in 1 John 2:18. See SBLGNT, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%202%3A18-27&version=SBLGNT, and BibleHub interlinear, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-18.htm. The phrase names a present eschatological condition after Christ’s coming; it is not a timetable. ↩

  2. The singular expectation antichristos erchetai is followed by antichristoi polloi gegonasin, “many antichrists have come/arisen.” See STEP Bible, https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=SBLG%7Creference=1John.2.18-27, and BibleHub, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-18.htm. ↩

  3. St Augustine, Homily 3 on the First Epistle of John, trans. H. Browne, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170203.htm. ↩

  4. St Augustine, Homily 3 on the First Epistle of John, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170203.htm. ↩

  5. Greek chrisma, “anointing” or “unction,” in 1 John 2:20 and 2:27. See BibleHub, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-20.htm and https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-27.htm. ↩

  6. Critical texts often print oidate pantes, “you all know,” while the reading reflected by NKJV is panta, “all things.” SBLGNT and STEP record the variation. See https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%202%3A18-27&version=SBLGNT and https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=SBLG%7Creference=1John.2.18-27. Manuscript priority claims require fuller apparatus verification. Verse 21 controls the pastoral sense either way. ↩

  7. Date-resolved CopticChurch.net page for 28 April 2026 lists 1 John 2:18-23 as the Liturgy Catholic Epistle on Tuesday of the third week of the Holy Fifty Days: https://copticchurch.net/readings?g_year=2026&g_month=04&g_day=28. The reading ends at verse 23 and is therefore a strong partial overlap, not the full session range. ↩

  8. Forms of menō, “remain/abide,” structure 1 John 2:19, 24, and 27. See BibleHub, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-19.htm, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-24.htm, and https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-27.htm. ↩

  9. Greek peri tōn planōntōn hymas, “concerning those leading you astray,” present participle of active misleading. See BibleHub, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_john/2-26.htm. ↩

  10. St Augustine, Homily 3 on the First Epistle of John, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170203.htm. ↩

  11. St Augustine, Homily 3 on the First Epistle of John, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/170203.htm. ↩

  12. St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 21.7 (On the Mysteries, III, On Chrism), NPNF 2/7, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.ii.xxv.html. ↩

  13. St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 21.7, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.ii.xxv.html. Cyril’s use is a fourth-century sacramental reception of John’s anointing language, not a neutral lexical proof that the first-century noun has only one possible referent. ↩

  14. Critical texts often print present imperative menete en autō, “abide in Him,” while the reading reflected by NKJV is future meneite, “you will abide.” See SBLGNT, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%202%3A18-27&version=SBLGNT, and STEP Bible, https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=SBLG%7Creference=1John.2.18-27. The guide retains the NKJV wording; claims about originality require fuller apparatus verification. ↩

  15. Wedding of Cana Catholic Epistle 1 John 2:20-25: https://copticchurch.net/readings?g_year=2026&g_month=01&g_day=21. Fourth Sunday of Kiahk page visibly contains 1 John 2:24-27 within a larger reading whose printed endpoint label is malformed because 1 John 2 ends at verse 29: https://copticchurch.net/readings?g_year=2026&g_month=01&g_day=04. Safe claim: containment of 2:24-27, not the impossible endpoint. ↩

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