Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
Who Is the Liar?
1 John 2:22-23
22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. · WEB
The letter finally defines its term, and the definition turns out to be about a denial that cannot be kept to one person of the Godhead.
The question in verse 22 is asked with the article — the liar — as though a single figure were in view, and the answer is given as a description rather than a name: the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ.
This is where the letter defines the word it introduced four verses earlier. An antichrist is not identified by cruelty, by power, or by opposition to believers. The mark is a denial about who Jesus is. The definition is doctrinal, and the letter gives no other.
The second half of the verse widens it in a way the denier would not have accepted. He denies the Father and the Son — one denial, two objects. The letter treats a claim to hold the Father while rejecting the Son as not available.
Verse 23 states that as a principle in two balanced clauses. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Nothing is offered in between, and the reasoning is not spelled out because the letter has already supplied it: the Son is the one who made the Father visible and handleable 1 John 1:1–2. A God known apart from him would have to be known some other way, and the letter has spent its opening insisting there is no other way.
The practical edge is that the readers are not being asked to judge sincerity. They are being given a confession to listen for.
settled What this mark means