Paragraph 7–11

Read 7–11 in both Berean Standard Bible and Good News Translation. Compare the two versions.

Paragraph Theme: In these verses John explains the problem which caused him to write this letter. There are false teachers traveling around. If the church welcomes them, they will lead the church into sin. So John shows his readers how to recognize them from their teaching and he warns his readers to have nothing to do with such people.

7a

For: (Logical Relationship) Although many English versions do not translate the Greek connecting word here, it may be good in your translation to follow the example of the Berean Standard Bible and translate it in order to show that John is now going to explain why he said what he said in verses 4–6.

deceivers: (Meaning) This term means people who claimed to be giving Christian teaching, but in fact they were deceiving those who they taught, because their teaching was not true Christianity.

have gone out into the world: (Multiple Senses) As in 1 John 4:1, this phrase is not being used in the sense of leaving a specific place; rather it refers to many people going to different places.

refusing to confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh: (Meaning) This is referring to the same false teaching as 1 John 4:2. See the notes on that verse. These people denied that Jesus Christ became a real human being when he came into the world.

7b

the deceiver and the antichrist: (Meaning) This is not referring to two separate people. It means “the antichrist, who is the main person who deceives people.”

© 2000 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.