1 John 2:20

1 John 2:20. And ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. There is no ‘but' here: the verse introduces a new consolation; and that is the fact of the impartation of the Holy Ghost to all the members of the spiritual fellowship, as a Spirit of consecration generally, and particularly as a teaching guide into all truth. ‘Ye have,' as the result of having ‘received' (1 John 2:27), your part of the common Pentecostal gift. This was received from the ‘Holy One:' that is, Christ, who is ‘the life,' or ‘the Son' as the source of our sonship, ‘the Righteous' as the source of our righteousness, and ‘the Holy One ‘as the source of our sanctification. The term ‘unction,' or chrisma, like that of ‘seed' or sperma, refers to the Holy Ghost, whose name has not yet been mentioned. It goes back to the Old Testament, which St. John never formally quotes, though he habitually incorporates it: there the ‘anointing oil' or ‘the oil of anointing' (Exodus 29:7; Exodus 29:21) is the symbol of the Holy Ghost, first as setting apart for God whatever was touched by it, secondly as specifically consecrating the priests and kings and prophets of the old economy. The antitype was poured out on Christ ‘without measure' that it might flow upon all His members, consecrating them to God, and making them representatives of His three official relations. In its first meaning, which certainly is included here, it signifies that those who receive the chrism belong to Christ as opposed to all antichrists: this indeed suggesting the word. In its second meaning it signifies that the members of Christ's mystical body share His unction as the Prophet: they have His Spirit teaching them ‘all things,' that is, ‘all the truth ‘as ‘truth is in Jesus.' The chrisma becomes as it were a charisma: the gift of spiritual knowledge in all that pertains to the doctrine presently made prominent. St. John, as his manner is, lays down the high and sacred privilege in all its perfectness: the qualifications are inserted afterwards, and indeed are suggested in every sentence. 1 John 2:21. The promise of the ‘Spirit of the truth' is evidently in St. John's thoughts, and these words are in indirect allusion to that promise as fulfilled in the community. The Saviour laid stress on ‘the truth' as one: the truth embodied in His own person. That central truth all who receive the anointing must know, and the apostle, with the same feeling that dictated the previous words, ‘I have written to you, children, because ye know the Father,' acknowledges their heavenly instruction even while he is instructing them himself.

I write not unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it. His purpose here is to show them that the truth is not only a revelation of the Christ, but a revelation of antichrist also. And that no lie is of the truth: he takes it for granted that they know; that is, in the form of taking it for granted, he urgently exhorts them to remember that there can be no peace between the truth and any form of the lie whatever. The same absolute contrast and diametrical opposition that he establishes between regeneration and sin, the Father's love and love of the world, light and darkness, he establishes between truth and error. We often trace theological error to a perversion of lesser truth; and in many lesser matters rightly. But ‘the truth' as it is explained in the next verse cannot shade off into less true, and reach the false that way. Hence the abrupt question that follows.