Ve know all things (oiSare mavta). The best texts read mates, ye all know; in which case the connection is with the following clause: “I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it.”
21. | have not written (ov« éypaya). Or, ZL wrote not. See on ver. 13.
22. A liar (6 wevorns). Rev., correctly, “the liar.” For similar interrogative phrase see ch. v. 5. It marks the lively feeling with which the apostle writes. By the definite article, the liar, the lie is set forth in its concrete personality: the one who impersonates all that is false, as antichrist represents every form of hostility and opposition to Christ. The denial that Jesus is the Christ is the representative falsehood. He that denies is the representative liar.
He that denieth (6 apvovpevos). The article with the par- ticiple denotes the habitual denial. Lit., the one denying, the one who habitually represents this attitude towards Christ. The words are aimed at the heresy of Cerinthus, a man of Jewish descent and educated at Alexandria. He denied the miraculous conception of Jesus, and taught that, after His baptism, the Christ descended upon Him in the form of a dove, and that He then announced the unknown Father and wrought miracles; but that, towards the end of His ministry, the Christ departed again from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and rose from the dead, while the Christ remained impassible (incapable of suffering) as a spiritual being.
The Father. The title the Father occurs always in its simple form in the Epistle. Never Ais or our Father, or the Father in heaven.
23. Hath not the Father (ovdé rov marépa eyes). Properly, “hath not even the Father,” though he professes to reverence the Father while rejecting the Son. Compare John viii. 42.