The most common view of morality in our culture is probably the one that says we can do whatever we like as long as we don’t hurt anyone else. This is, of course, accurate as far as it goes. If you are going to engage in some kind of destructive behavior, the rest of us would be happiest if you only harm yourself. But is that the whole story?
In a time and culture in which love has come to mean any fuzzily defined positive feeling, John’s healthy focus on the truth is a welcome change. There is such a thing as truth and we find it in Jesus. There are also swindlers who have gone out into the world, who deny some basic doctrines about Christ. John calls them deceivers and antichrists.
In John’s day, the Greco-Roman world held to a hodgepodge of religious beliefs. With travel and communication being what they are today, the spiritual gumbo is thicker and gooier than ever.
We don’t have to look very hard in the Bible to find warnings about spiritual deception. Several of them come out of the mouth of Jesus. For example, Matthew 24:11, “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.”
Central Reflections 