2 John 7 7For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This one is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Verse 7 is linked with what came before it (for or “because” [hoti] showing why the readers should know the truth about love and be aware of falsehood). Love and truth go together and serve as the two foci of this letter. The problem that likely prompted the writing of this short letter is now clearly stated: deceivers. A deceiver (planoi) is a trickster who purposefully or ignorantly distorts the truth and leads people astray. There are countless ways to deceive people. The big danger is when deceivers make a lie sound like the truth in a convincing way. This verse implies that the deception was internal to the church. People who had been part of the church had gone out into the world where they could preach their wrong interpretation of the gospel. The word many indicates a certain urgency and seriousness about the situation. The world was an open field of opportunity to teach a new doctrine that would appeal to people’s curiosity and selfishness.
Heresy was growing in places the church has been planted. Since the earliest days of gospel preaching in Acts, people have misunderstood or rejected the message about Jesus. Two particular and related heresies were growing by the time John wrote this letter, likely towards the latter half of the first century. The crucial issue was a distortion of the central Christian doctrine of Christ, Christology. These teachers had the wrong teaching about the Incarnation. They could not or would not accept that Jesus was both divine and human. The divine side would have been easier to understand for Gentiles because of the common myths about divine beings. The problem was accepting that a divine being had flesh and blood and died. Without belief in Jesus’ physical death, the doctrine of resurrection becomes impossible, and thus, the whole theology of salvation crumbles into human-centered mythology. All Christian doctrine rests upon accepting the historical and real Jesus in the flesh.
Two particular heresies were developing. Docetism was the belief that Jesus only appeared to be human, a sort of convincing-looking spirit. Gnosticism was similar but developed an elaborate cosmology embedded with Platonism to help explain how an unreachable, infinite God (or the “good”) could come to a sinful, evil world. The two heretical teachings share similarities and were beginning to develop by the time John wrote his letters. John holds back no punches by labeling such ideas as deceitful lies and from the antichrist, meaning someone who is “against Christ.” If one’s understanding about Jesus is wrong, everything else one believes and does (ethics) will become distorted. The truth about Jesus is crucial, and one must have an accurate, biblical, and orthodox understanding of it.