<p>2:22 <em>Who is the liar but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist: he that denies the Father and the Son</em>- The antichrist has been defined in our notes on :18 as Judaist infiltrators to the fledgling church. They were denying that the Lord was the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. But the faithful had received the anointing (:1), the presence of the Christ within, as real as He was once amongst His people &quot;in the flesh&quot;. By denying Him as the anointed one, they were declaring themselves not to be of Him, to not have received His Spirit, and those who had received it could see clearly that they were not His. They were denying the Son, as Peter had, but without repentance. And for all Judaism's much vaunted focus upon God, they were denying the Father by denying His Son.</p><p>We deny Jesus is the Christ if we don't preach Him (Mt. 10:33). As explained on :20, the context here is of having been anointed with the commission to preach Christ to the world. It follows that if we really believe that Jesus was not just Jesus of Nazareth but the Christ of God, therefore we won't deny Him but will preach Him. This is why there is connection between confessing Jesus as Christ and preaching Him (Jn. 9:22; Acts 18:5; Phil. 2:11).</p>