1 JOHN
1 John is part of what NT scholars refer to as the “Johannine Corpus”—texts thought to be written by the Apostle John (and/or 1 of his disciples)—the other texts being the Gospel of John, the letters of 2 and 3 John, and Revelation.
This body of texts was written within a 10-15 year period. In terms of the socal-historical background, mainstream Johannine scholars tend to understand the history of the Johannine community like this. Originally, the community was a group of Palestinian Jews who became believers and followers of Jesus. In time, however, unbelieving Jews opposed the group (b/c of Jewish Christians’ view of Jesus), and sought to expel them from their synagogues (where they were still meeting). Some of the believers reacted against this threat by concealing their views of Jesus, and so continued to worship in the synagogues; others reacted strongly against unbelieving Jews and began to view them with extreme hostility. This was the situation at the time the Gospel was penned. By the time the letters were written, a segment of the Johannine community had rejected the larger Johannine community and gone their own, separate way. 1 John, then, is an open treatise directed to the whole assembly written to convince the congregation to remain true to John’s teaching. 2 John is a personal letter to the community written to reinforce 1 John; and 3 John is a personal letter written to an individual to help that person deal with the continuing conflict.
In terms of authorship, while only Revelation explicitly claims Johannine authorship (Rev 1:1), the close similarities between these 5 texts suggest that “John” stands behind the others as well. What kind of similarities, you ask? Well, if you were to sit down and read all 5 texts consecutively you would see similar motifs: light—darkness, truth—lie, new—old commandments, “abiding” (in Christ), and “witness”/“testimony”; and similar vocabulary: words/expressions like “word”, “love”, “life”, “true”/“truth”, “children of God”, “born of God”, “believe”/“faith”, and “knowledge”/“know”. Still, there are some important differences—but I’ll leave that to you to find!
Perhaps the simplest outline of the letter would be: introduction (1:1-4), living in the light (1:5-2:29), living as children of God (3:1-5:13), and concluding remarks (5:14-21). OK, so let’s follow the flow of John’s thought.
Right from the introduction, John puts Jesus front and centre (1:1-4). 1 of if not the chief reason members of John’s community left the fold was over Jesus, viz., the nature of his incarnation. Those who left doubted, on the 1 hand, that Jesus actually came in the flesh, i.e., the body he had was not real but only appeared to be real. Later theologians came to call this belief Docetism, which part of Gnosticism—a strand of Christianity that espoused secret, revelatory knowledge. John counters this false view by asserting the physicality of the Christ event: John, as well as others, not only heard and saw Jesus with their physical ears and eyes, they actually touched his body with their physical hands (1 John 1:1; cf. John 20:27-29). On the other hand, those who left disputed the deity of Jesus (as Gnosticism does). Again, John rebuffs this notion: Jesus is the eternal life (there can only be 1), and he was with God the Father in eternity past, i.e., like the Father, Jesus is eternal (1 John 1:2; cf. John 1:1-2).
John continues to affirm Christ’s deity and reveal its implications in the next section of the letter (living in the light [1:5-2:29]). John states that God is light, without a single spot of darkness (1 John 1:5). In other words, God is perfectly morally pure and is unstained by sin. Consequently, those who have genuine fellowship with God will walk in his light, i.e., in moral purity (1 John 1:6). Jesus shed his blood to cleanse believers from their sins (1 John 1:7). To deny that we have any sin problem whatsoever is to deny the work of Christ—who is God (1:8-10). Hence, to appropriate Jesus’ cleansing sacrifice for the sins we commit, we need simply to confess our sin to God (1:9). Question: Is there a different between confessing our sins to God and repenting of our sins?
John goes on to delineate briefly some of the entailments of Jesus’ cross work. Because of who Jesus is and what he accomplished on the cross, he is our Advocate (2:1) in other words, in the courtroom of God’s justice Jesus is our high-powered, undefeated attorney who represents us before God the Judge (hallelujah for that!). Jesus’ sacrifice served to propitiate God (2:2), that is to say, his sacrifice turned away God’s holy wrath. The OT (as well as Revelation) paints a fearful picture of the fierce wrath of God. Paul says we needed saving from God’s wrath (Rom 5:9), and Jesus did exactly that with his sacrifice on the cross. Hallelujah!
The word “know” pops up repeatedly in this little letter. “Know” in the bible, particularly as it relates to people and God, is quite different from how we typically use “know”. For us, “know” essentially means “to know about”; in the bible, however—especially as far as John is concerned—“know” means to “know personally and experientially”. John teaches that true knowledge of God, i.e., to know God personally and experientially, invariably leads to a virtuous life; and Christian virtue manifests in keeping God’s Word (1 John 2:3-6), and loving fellow Christians (2:7-11). Many people claim to know God, but, judging from the lives they lead, they only know about God—they don’t know him personally or experientially. Consequently, they disobey God’s Word (2:4), their heart is full of hatred for (some) Christians (1 John 2:9), they love the things of the world more than they love God (2:15-16); they even walk away from the truth (1 John 2:19), or Paul says, they shipwrecked their faith. Not surprisingly, immoral behaviour is preceded by false beliefs about Jesus: these “believers” deny that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22), and by thus, they show that God is not in/with them (1 John 2:23). Question: Does John view these “believers” as Christians who lost their salvation or as people who were never truly saved in the first place?
These motifs will carry through into the next section of John’s letter, as we’ll see.