Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
You Have an Anointing
1 John 2:20-21
20 You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. · WEB
Against teachers claiming a knowledge the ordinary believer lacked, the letter says the readers already have what those teachers were selling.
Verse 20 answers the previous paragraph directly. Some have gone out; you have an anointing from the Holy One. The pronoun is emphatic in the Greek, setting these readers against those who left.
The word is the one for being anointed, and the letter does not explain the image, presumably because the readers did not need it explained. What matters is who gives it — the Holy One — and what it yields: you all know. The word all is doing the work. Not the advanced, not the initiated, not those who received further instruction after the basics. All of them.
That is the letter's answer to a movement built on graded knowledge. It does not argue that the departed teachers were wrong about the content first; it removes the premise that some believers are equipped and others are dependent.
Verse 21 makes the same point about the letter itself, and it is an unusual thing for a writer to say. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. The letter positions itself as reminder rather than instruction, which is consistent with what it does elsewhere 1 John 2:7 1 John 2:24.
The last clause is a small logical hinge that the next verse will use: no lie is of the truth. Two things claiming the same origin cannot both have it.
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