Verse 3: And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
False Teachers Identified
John continues with his warning against false teachers, referring to them as every spirit. This is not implying they are ghosts or supernatural beings, but instead spirit refers to an individual and that aspect of their personality “by which he perceives, reflects, feels, desires.”1 He then describes their most disreputable and despicable characteristic: they are those who do not confess Jesus. Since John merely states Jesus, this is regarding their continuous refusal to acknowledge the humanity of Our Lord in His hypostatic union, as delineated in the discussion of the previous verse. They considered Jesus Christ to be just a ghostly apparition and not the eternal God-Man. This was the heresy propagated by the Gnostic false teachers in John’s day. The false teaching today is the denial of Christ’s deity by claiming that He was simply a good man or a wonderful teacher.
John emphatically assures us regarding these false teachers and their teachings that they do not have their origin from the ultimate source of God; and without a doubt they represent the spirit of the antichrist. This word is found only 5 times in the New Testament, and only in John’s epistles (but not in Revelation). The word antichrist means “one who claims to be Christ or is opposed to Christ.”2 Here it expresses the definite identity3 and intent of the false teachings about the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ.
It should be noted that this is not, as some have supposed, a reference to the Beast of Revelation (11:7; 13:1, etc.; cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:3), the person that theologians have named the Antichrist, who will wreak havoc during the Tribulation period prior to Christ’s Second Coming (Revelation 19). This is borne out by the phrase spirit of the antichrist. Even though the word spirit is not in the original Greek, yet all translations include the word based on the rules of Greek grammar that it is “clearly implied.”4 Accordingly, Dr. Ryrie states that this phrase “refers to demonic forces behind anti-Christian teaching and activity.”5
Heard it is Coming
Of which (the spirit of the antichrist) you have heard it is coming. This phrase is almost as if John is refreshing their memory of something they had already known about. What could he be referring to? For this was discussed in 1 John 2:18, that John’s readers were aware of the writings of the early church and had heard the warning the Apostle Paul gave to the Ephesian elders:
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”(Acts 20:28–30)
Since Paul wrote to Timothy in Ephesus, John’s readers would have been familiar with them and his continued warnings:
As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. (1 Timothy 1:3–4)
Paul further revealed what to expect in the future:
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. (1 Timothy 4:1–2)
And now, 30 years after Paul had written to Timothy, John is reminding them of what they had heard and were taught, most likely by John himself, given that “strong tradition says that John spent his old age in Ephesus.”6
John uses two different Greek tenses for the word heard in 2:18 and here in 4:3. In 2:18 he is simply stating the fact of the occasion upon their hearing of this truth. 7 Whereas in our passage, the Greek tense describes the existing results of what they have heard, as explained by Dana & Mantey: “This is the emphatic method in Greek of presenting a fact or condition.”8 The existing result of what they have heard is that it (the spirit of the antichrist) is persistently coming and they now know the specific false teachings: the denial of the humanity of Jesus Christ.
Already Present
The following phrase should be disturbing to all believers in Jesus Christ. These false teachers, these savage wolves, these antichrists are already in the world. They are present among us today. They have come “from among our own selves” (Acts 20:30) and they have entered into our churches. Jude informed us of this:
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 4)
The Jews in the 1st Century denied the deity of Christ (John 5:18; 10:33; 19:7); while the Gnostics rejected His humanity, believing that God could not be associated with inherently evil matter, namely the flesh of humanity.9 Today, false teachers reject the authority of Jesus Christ, made evident by their rejection of the authority of His Word—Scripture. Their errant interpretation of Scripture mingles doctrinal truth with cultural dictates, eager to become friends with the world. It is difficult to determine what exactly motivates them and blinds them from the truth. But the Apostle James aptly describes them and reprimands them of their error:
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)Let us be alert to this insidious trend and instead remain loyal to the authoritative and infallible Word of God.
[1] Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 2.593.
[2] Newman, B. M., Jr. (1993). In A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; United Bible Societies, p. 17.
[3] Dana, H.E. & Mantey, Julius R. (1957). A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, Toronto, Ontario: Macmillan Co., p. 137.
[4] Robertson, A. T. (1933). Word Pictures in the New Testament, Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1 John 4:3.
[5] Ryrie, C. C. (1995). Ryrie Study Bible: New American Standard Bible, Chicago: Moody Press, p. 1994 note.
[6] Ryrie, p. 1900.
[7] Dana, H.E. & Mantey, Julius R. (1957). A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, Toronto, Ontario: Macmillan Co., p. 196.
[8] Dana & Mantey, p. 202.
[9] Kurian, G. T. (2001). Docetism, In Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary: the Authoritative Resource on the Christian World. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
© 2025 David M. Rossi
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