29 - 1Jn 2:22
Τίς ἐστιν ὁ ψεύστης, εἰ μὴ ὁ ἀρνούμενος ὅτι Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ Χριστός; οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀντίχριστος, ὁ ἀρνούμενος τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὸν υἱόν. The proposition, that πᾶν ψεῦδος ἐκ τῆς ἀληθείας οὐκ ἔστιν [“every lie is not of the truth”], seems at the first glance to be so perfectly clear and self-evidencing, that it needs at the utmost only to be expressed for the sake of logical completeness. But, however plain it may be to the theoretic consciousness, it very little governs the practical. With Christians in general, sin can be possible only through their forgetting that every, even the slightest lie (understood in St. John’s full meaning), excludes from the truth. And how solemn is that assertion! It follows from it that πᾶνψεῦδος [“every lie”] leads directly into fellowship with the antichrist nature. This is the consequence which is deduced in 1Jn 2:22. All depends here upon rightly understanding the article in the clause τίς ἐστιν ὁ ψεύστης [“who is the liar”]; the parallelism with the ὁἀντίχριστος [“the antichrist”] in this second part of the verse would suggest at once that we must interpret this of the Antichrist himself, and to translate the article as meaning: who is the one true arch-liar? But this yields a very loose connection with what precedes. Hence it commends itself that we refer back the ὁ ψεύστης [“the liar”] simply to the last words of 1Jn 2:21, and place ὁ ψεύστης [“the liar”] in correlation with the πᾶνψεῦδος [“every lie”]. In what precedes, every lie was declared to bear witness that the ἀλήθεια [“truth”] has no place in the man who is the subject of it. That leads then further to the question: who makes himself thus partaker of such ψεῦδος [“lie”]? wliat is his spirit and nature, that it bears in itself such fearful consequences? The answer is: that is the liar,—the article thus indicates the liar as the person spoken of just before,—and his nature is that he does not acknowledge Jesus as the Christ. In the assertory form the proposition would run, οὐκ ἐστιν ψεύστης εἰ μὴκ.τ.λ. [“he is not a liar except, etc. ”]. The interrogative form is adopted in order to indicate to the reader that the proposition concerned is one self-understood, resting upon the fact of his own consciousness, about which there can be no contest or doubt. The nature and moving principle of every lie (πᾶνψεῦδος [“every lie”], 1Jn 2:21) is here declared. It is constituted by the strong ἀρνεῖσθαι [“to deny”]: that is more than mere denying; it rather expresses that the denial is based on the ground of opposed and better conviction. We may compare Joh 1:20, where it is said of the Baptist, ὡμολόγησεν καὶ οὐκ ἠρνήσατο [“he confessed and did not deny”],—that is, he gave to the truth, well known by him, its full honour. Thus the repudiation of Jesus as the Christ is the essence of every lie. Two questions here emerge. One is, how far this may be regarded as the fundamental nature of the lie; and the other, how far this may be even accounted as equal to the only lie (εἰμὴ [“except”]). The former question is easily answered. If Jesus, to wit, is the truth, and that simply because He is the Messiah who was anointed by God with the Spirit without measure, then the denial of His Messiahship is not only the turning away from a truth, but a break with all truth; for He is the concentration of all truth, which is one with Him, and there is no other method of reaching the truth than He. But the other question is more difficult, as to this being the only lie; since even with the acknowledgment of the Messiahship of Jesus we may conceive many other falsehoods as to other regions of truth to be bound up. But that is only a false conception, and it seems so only so long as we think of a merely intellectual or theoretical acknowledgment of the Lord; which is never the case with St. John, who in 1Jn 2:14 connects the ἔγνωκέναιτὸνΘεόν [“know God”] immediately with the νικᾶντὸνπονηρόν [“victory over the evil one”]. As soon as we regard the confession of Christ as the power of spiritual life, which is supposed to sway the whole of man’s being, it is natural to behold every lie, πᾶνψεῦδος [“every lie”], any kind of fellowship with the ungodly, as a removal from Christ, a renunciation of Him as the Messiah,—that is, of Him who has the χρίσμαοὐκἐκμέτρου [“anointing without measure”], the full and perfect truth. As certainly as the slightest obliquity in the circumference of a circle causes the circle to be a circle no longer, disturbing the equal supremacy of the centre, so the slightest lie is a disturbance of the supremacy of Christ.
Every lie, be it fashioned however it may, has in its essence the denial of the Son of God. Hence, therefore—and that is the next proposition of the apostle—every lie is a direct participation in the antichrist nature; for the ἀρνεῖσθαι ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἔστιν ὁ Χριστός [“to deny that Jesus is the Christ”]; is the distinctive mark or token of Antichrist. Ὁ ψεύστης [“the liar”], that is, according to the explanation now given, everyone who enters into fellowship with the lie, denies Christ; and thus the lie and the antichrist nature, and the liar and Antichrist, are one and the same. And, in order more vigorously to emphasize this identity of the two, the apostle repeats after the οὗτός ἔστινὁἀντίχριστος [“the one who is the Antichrist”], once more in the form of an apposition, the element in common between the ψεύστηνεἶναι [“being a liar”] and the ἀντίχριστονεἶναι [“being an antichrist”]: and that is, ὁ ἀρνούμενος τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὸν υἱόν [“the one who denies Father and the Son”].
Now, it is undeniable that the proposition, which we have thus derived from the whole, is of so extremely severe a character that it sounds almost repulsive. But it is equally clear that it thus presents the most urgent reason which the exhortation could bring forward in favour of utter severance from the Antichrist: he who in the least degree recedes from the ἀλήθεια [“truth”] falls away from fellowship with Christ, has denied Christ Himself, and has become a member of Antichrist. Now this, even apart from the stringency of the context, is a doctrine precisely conformable to the whole Johannaean view of things. There is no apostle who to the same extent, and with the same consistency, carries out the total severance between the world and the kingdom of God. The third chapter will give us occasion to bring forward abundant evidence of this. Commonly those men only are called antichrists who have openly displayed the sentiment of opposition to Christ, and in whom this sentiment rules the entire life. But here it is amply shown that every ψεῦδος [“lie”]; involves this principle, and therefore internally makes men into antichrists, and the weight of the propositions asserted so peremptorily by the apostle is much augmented by the total absence of conjunctions: neither does a γάρ[“for”] unite the first half of 1Jn 2:22 with 1Jn 2:21, nor does a δέ [“but”] connect the second half of 1Jn 2:22 with the first. The sentences fall on the reader’s soul like notes of the trumpet. Without cement, and therefore all the more ruggedly clasping each other, they are like a cyclopaean wall.