If We Have the Holy Spirit, Do We Need Other Teachers?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Podcast listener Roscoe from Tennessee writes,

00:00:08.000 | "Hi Pastor John, I love the podcast

00:00:09.800 | "and enjoy the little tidbits I receive from you

00:00:11.760 | "as you proclaim God's word.

00:00:13.520 | "My question is quite simple.

00:00:15.120 | "What does the Apostle John imply or mean

00:00:17.460 | "when he states in 1 John 2, verses 26 to 27 this?

00:00:22.460 | "But you have received the Holy Spirit

00:00:24.360 | "and he lives within you,

00:00:25.640 | "so you don't need anyone to teach you what is true.

00:00:29.200 | "For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know

00:00:31.780 | "and what he teaches is true, it is not a lie.

00:00:35.080 | "So just as he taught you,

00:00:36.420 | "remain in fellowship with Christ."

00:00:39.200 | End quote, that's from the New Living Translation.

00:00:42.280 | What does this mean for average Christians

00:00:44.040 | and for our Bible reading?

00:00:45.560 | Is this a charge not to listen to teachers?

00:00:48.200 | Are we given a new empowerment in our Bible reading?

00:00:51.320 | P.S. I listen to and appreciate my pastor.

00:00:55.120 | He's a fine man of God.

00:00:56.800 | Pastor John, what would you say to Roscoe?

00:00:59.200 | Okay, let's walk through the text

00:01:04.080 | and let the context help us out here.

00:01:08.480 | Admittedly, it does sound strange

00:01:11.440 | to hear John say in 1 John 2, 27,

00:01:16.440 | "You have no need that anyone should teach you."

00:01:21.640 | It sounds strange because he himself is at that moment

00:01:25.840 | doing a kind of teaching.

00:01:28.280 | And it sounds strange because Jesus commanded us

00:01:31.440 | to teach the nations all things.

00:01:33.040 | And it sounds strange because teaching is a spiritual gift

00:01:36.560 | from God which he would want us to use and on and on.

00:01:39.840 | The reasons why it would sound strange are many.

00:01:42.840 | So let's look 'cause we know he's not stupid.

00:01:46.520 | He knows what he's saying, he means what he means.

00:01:49.680 | And we wanna dig in here and let the context help us

00:01:52.740 | see how this is coherent.

00:01:54.960 | So let's start back at verse 19.

00:01:57.800 | If Roscoe wants to get his Bible,

00:02:00.200 | this would be a good time to do it.

00:02:01.600 | And I'm using the ESV because his New Living Translation

00:02:05.640 | is a little bit of a paraphrase.

00:02:07.760 | Start back at 19 and John refers to some folks

00:02:12.760 | who had been professing Christians,

00:02:16.980 | but somehow had been deceived

00:02:19.800 | and made shipwreck of their faith and left the church.

00:02:23.080 | So verse 19, "They went out from us,

00:02:25.960 | "but they were not of us.

00:02:27.520 | "For if they had been of us,

00:02:28.780 | "they would have continued with us.

00:02:30.380 | "But they went out that it might be plain

00:02:32.040 | "that they were not of us."

00:02:33.840 | And then John contrasts those people

00:02:37.000 | with you who are true Christians.

00:02:40.360 | Verse 20, "But you have been anointed by the Holy One

00:02:45.360 | "and you all have knowledge."

00:02:50.880 | Or perhaps a better translation, even more radical,

00:02:55.240 | "You know all things," which is another problem,

00:02:58.720 | but you don't need a teacher, you know all things.

00:03:00.520 | Well, all things in what sense, with what limitations?

00:03:05.320 | In other words, what makes the difference

00:03:07.960 | between you and those who have left

00:03:11.100 | is that you have the Holy Spirit.

00:03:13.540 | You have this anointing in the Holy Spirit

00:03:16.320 | and He will not let that happen to you.

00:03:19.520 | He will grant you to have a right understanding

00:03:23.920 | of all things that you need to know to stay safe in Christ.

00:03:28.920 | There's the contrast that He's drawing

00:03:34.280 | between those who left, who were deceived,

00:03:36.780 | and you now, who are not going to be deceived

00:03:39.360 | because you have the Holy Spirit.

00:03:40.840 | And then He gives a glimpse of what the false teaching is.

00:03:44.560 | Verse 22, "Who is the liar?

00:03:47.920 | "But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ."

00:03:52.080 | This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.

00:03:55.500 | No one who denies the Son has the Father.

00:03:57.460 | Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

00:04:01.120 | So the issue is the nature of Christ.

00:04:05.880 | Who is He?

00:04:07.440 | And the false teachers deny that Jesus is the Christ,

00:04:12.280 | the Messiah, the Christ, the Messiah,

00:04:15.880 | has not come in the flesh.

00:04:18.120 | That's what they're teaching.

00:04:19.080 | He hadn't come in the flesh.

00:04:20.160 | This idea of a divine Messiah in the flesh,

00:04:22.920 | the false teachers were rejecting.

00:04:25.880 | And to get this wrong is to go totally wrong.

00:04:31.280 | Verse 23, "No one who denies the Son has the Father."

00:04:36.280 | So that's terrible.

00:04:39.400 | I mean, that's the ultimate.

00:04:40.560 | You're lost, you don't have God.

00:04:42.840 | Then John mentions two safeguards.

00:04:45.760 | Here we're getting close to the issue.

00:04:47.440 | Two safeguards that they have against this error.

00:04:52.440 | And the first is the teaching, teaching,

00:04:56.600 | that came to them in the beginning

00:04:58.600 | of their Christian life.

00:04:59.440 | Verse 24, "Let what you heard from the beginning

00:05:03.640 | abide in you.

00:05:05.480 | If what you heard from the beginning abides in you,

00:05:10.040 | then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father."

00:05:13.900 | So there's no thought here that the anointing

00:05:17.840 | from the Holy Spirit would replace the knowledge of Christ

00:05:22.000 | that comes by hearing, teaching.

00:05:25.040 | You're supposed to keep it, hold onto it, remember it,

00:05:27.720 | let it abide in you.

00:05:29.000 | They had been taught once by men.

00:05:32.000 | That's how they know the Word of God.

00:05:34.160 | We don't know how extensive their body of knowledge was.

00:05:38.560 | Might've been remarkably extensive.

00:05:40.520 | Could've been the whole Old Testament

00:05:41.960 | delivered to them in mass in some kind of document

00:05:45.800 | that was cherished, or it could have been

00:05:49.360 | the whole story of the Gospels and on and on.

00:05:52.400 | Whatever it was, they had, John says,

00:05:55.960 | they had what they needed to be protected

00:05:59.760 | against this false teaching.

00:06:02.840 | And it had come to them through the teaching of men.

00:06:06.040 | So they don't need someone to replace it,

00:06:10.440 | add to it, reinterpret it.

00:06:13.520 | They don't need that.

00:06:14.680 | They have the deposit of saving truth

00:06:17.440 | once for all delivered,

00:06:19.040 | and they've got what they need to be protected.

00:06:21.800 | That's what the deceivers are trying to do,

00:06:24.120 | add to the teachings, change the teachings,

00:06:26.560 | argue that they got the teachings wrong,

00:06:28.860 | somehow get them all mixed up about what they had heard

00:06:33.380 | so that they go off the deep end about Jesus.

00:06:37.520 | And so he adds, verse 26,

00:06:40.040 | "I write these things to you

00:06:41.600 | about those who are trying to deceive you."

00:06:44.560 | That's probably the most important contextual comment

00:06:48.480 | for understanding why he says, "You don't need teachers.

00:06:51.600 | I'm writing these things about those

00:06:54.720 | who are trying to deceive you."

00:06:56.460 | And then comes the second safeguard.

00:06:58.640 | So the first safeguard was,

00:07:00.120 | you've left what you've heard from the beginning,

00:07:02.900 | the Word of God, the teaching that I delivered to you,

00:07:05.040 | or somebody delivered to you, guard you.

00:07:07.760 | And now the second safeguard is, verse 26,

00:07:11.000 | "The anointing that you have received from him abides in you,

00:07:16.000 | and you have no need for anyone to teach you,

00:07:20.300 | but as his anointing,"

00:07:21.980 | this Holy Spirit presence and power,

00:07:24.820 | "as his anointing teaches you about everything

00:07:28.760 | and is true and no lie,

00:07:31.020 | just as you were taught, abide in him."

00:07:34.260 | In other words, the anointing of the Holy Spirit

00:07:38.220 | is all you need to avoid this heresy

00:07:41.880 | and interpret correctly what was taught you

00:07:45.660 | from the beginning about the Messiah.

00:07:48.540 | The purpose of this anointing is not to add new information

00:07:52.660 | to what they had heard from the beginning,

00:07:54.720 | but to give them such a clear and true sense of Christ

00:07:59.720 | and who he is in that teaching

00:08:02.800 | that they cannot be drawn away and swayed by the deceivers.

00:08:07.260 | So the point of saying

00:08:10.880 | that they don't have need of any teachers

00:08:14.480 | is that you have what you need.

00:08:17.600 | One, verse 24,

00:08:19.520 | "You have what you heard from the beginning.

00:08:23.080 | Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you."

00:08:25.400 | Number two, verse 26,

00:08:27.380 | "You have the anointing of the Holy Spirit."

00:08:31.560 | The anointing that you receive

00:08:33.040 | from the beginning abides in you.

00:08:34.960 | So they don't need, one, false teachers twisting

00:08:39.960 | what they heard from the beginning,

00:08:41.240 | and two, they don't need any more protection

00:08:45.360 | from the false teachers than they already have.

00:08:48.060 | The truth of God's word and the Holy Spirit,

00:08:51.880 | it really does boil down to that.

00:08:53.720 | You have the word, you have the spirit.

00:08:57.900 | What they need is to see that truth for what it is,

00:09:02.720 | and that's the work of the Holy Spirit.

00:09:06.000 | Amen. Thank you, Pastor John, for this clarity,

00:09:08.040 | and thank you for the question, Roscoe.

00:09:09.560 | We want your questions, your concise questions,

00:09:12.600 | and to get those to me,

00:09:13.800 | go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:09:18.800 | I do read every question, although due to volume,

00:09:22.200 | we cannot respond to any of the emails,

00:09:24.520 | but please, thank you for the encouragements.

00:09:26.120 | I know many of you encourage us.

00:09:27.840 | When you send those emails along, we thank you.

00:09:29.600 | We read all of those.

00:09:31.600 | I am your host, Tony Reinke.

00:09:33.240 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast

00:09:35.120 | with John Piper.

00:09:35.960 | We will see you tomorrow when we talk about

00:09:37.480 | how to humbly receive feedback and criticism from others,

00:09:42.140 | especially when it comes packaged in harshness.

00:09:45.680 | We'll see you then.

00:09:46.600 | (upbeat music)

00:09:49.180 | (upbeat music)

00:09:51.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

If We Have the Holy Spirit, Do We Need Other Teachers?

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