2 John 1:7

This verse gives the reason for the exhortation in 2 John 1:6 and links what follows with 2 John 1:4-6.

". . . the wandering prophets and preachers did present a problem. Their position was one which was singularly liable to abuse. They had an enormous prestige; and it was possible for the most undesirable characters to enter into a way of life in which they moved from place to place, living in very considerable comfort at the expense of the local congregations. A clever rogue could make a very comfortable living as an itinerant prophet. Even the pagan satirists saw this. Lucian, the Greek writer, in his work called the Peregrinus, draws the picture of a man who had found the easiest possible way of making a living without working. He was an itinerant charlatan who lived on the fat of the land by travelling [sic] round the various communities of the Christians, and settling down wherever he liked, and living luxuriously at their expense." [Note: Barclay, p. 156.]

Erroneous teaching had already begun to proliferate in the early church (e.g., Gnosticism, Docetism, Cerinthianism, etc.; cf. 1 John 2:18; 1 John 2:22-23; 1 John 2:27; 1 John 4:1-3). The common error was Christological. The false teachers regarded Jesus as something other than God’s Anointed One who had come in the flesh (cf. 1 John 5:1). "Coming" in the flesh means having come and continuing in flesh. This is the true view of the Incarnation. Jesus was and continues to be fully God and fully man.

"Christ is never said to come into flesh, but in flesh; the former would leave room for saying that deity was united with Jesus sometime after his birth." [Note: Charles C. Ryrie, "The Second Epistle of John," in The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, p. 1480.]

"The incarnation was more than a mere incident, and more than a temporary and partial connection between the Logos and human nature. It was the permanent guarantee of the possibility of fellowship, and the chief means by which it is brought about." [Note: A. E. Brooke, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Johannine Epistles, p. 175.]

This type of false teacher is a deceiver as well as opposed to Christ. John did not mean that such a person was the end-time Antichrist. The use of the definite article in Greek, translated "the," used with an unnamed individual as here, sometimes translates better with the English indefinite article "a" or "an." That understanding of this statement is preferable here in view of other Scriptures that indicate the end-time Antichrist has yet to appear (e.g., Daniel 11; 2 Thessalonians 2).

"The elder says that anybody who denies the truth is a very antichrist, just as we might speak of a supremely evil person as ’the very devil.’" [Note: Marshall, p. 71.]