Untitled Sermon
1:1 This letter is attributed to John, one of Jesus’ original twelve disciples. Along with Peter and James, he had a special relationship with Jesus. This letter was written between A.D. 85 and 90 from Ephesus, before John’s exile to the island of Patmos (see Revelation 1:9). Jerusalem had been destroyed in A.D. 70, and Christians had been scattered throughout the empire.
Unlike the style of most letters at this time, this letter does not give the name of its writer at the beginning. Both 2 and 3 John begin with “the Elder” and follow with the name of the addressee. This letter, however, includes no author’s name, except the understanding that this is an elder of the church writing to his “dear children” (2:1). (The Author section in the Introduction offers more information about this letter’s authorship.) This unaddressed, unsigned letter was probably more of a written sermon or treatise sent to several of the churches in and around Ephesus that were under John’s care. As the oldest living apostle, John was the “elder statesman” of Christianity; he had watched the church deal with conflict from within and persecution from without. Plentiful false teachers were accelerating the downward slide of many away from the Christian faith. John wrote this letter to put believers back on track.
God (the one who existed from the beginning) came into the world as a human in the person of Jesus Christ. John and the other apostles (we) had heard, seen, and touched him. When the Son entered into time, his fellowship with the Father also entered into time. Thus, to have heard Jesus was to have heard the Father speaking in the Son (John 14:10, 24), to have seen Jesus was to have seen the Father (John 14:8–10), and to have known Jesus was to have known him who was one with the Father (John 10:30, 38).
John called Jesus the Word of life. In his Gospel, John had written, “In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God” (John 1:1). As the “Word,” the Son of God fully conveys and communicates God. John’s use of the Word is a good title for the Son who both created the universe with God and then came to earth to be the perfect expression of God to humanity. Jesus, the Word, reveals God’s mind to human beings. Not only is Jesus Christ “the Word,” he is the Word of life—of spiritual life. People may be physically alive but spiritually dead. Jesus, however, as the express image of God himself, gives both spiritual life and eternal life to all who believe in him (1:2).
1:2 Divine, eternal life resided in Christ, so John described Jesus as this one who is life from God and repeated the fact that we have seen him. He, the other disciples, and thousands of other people had indeed “seen” Jesus. Jesus was more than just a human being. John’s work during the many years since Jesus’ ascension had been to testify and announce to everyone that Jesus is the one who is eternal life. Because Christ is eternal life, those who trust in him also have eternal life.
In Greek, the phrase, he was with the Father, suggests that the Word was face-to-face with the Father. This common Greek expression indicated a personal relationship. By using this expression, John was saying that the Word (the Son) and God (the Father) enjoyed an intimate, personal relationship from the beginning. In Jesus’ intercessory prayer, recorded in John 17, he revealed that the Father had loved him before the foundation of the world (John 17:24). The words then he was shown to us refer to the revelation of the Son of God in human form (see John 10:30; 14:7–10).
1:3 The plural pronoun we, used throughout the prologue, refers, at times, to John and the other apostles (for whom John was acting as spokesman) and also to John and any other believers who had seen Jesus Christ in bodily form. These people had actually seen and heard Jesus Christ; they told about it so that others may have fellowship with them, referring to the life (spiritual and eternal) that all Christians share in a living relationship or partnership. When the disciples were regenerated by the Holy Spirit, they actually entered into fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Having been brought into this living union, the apostles became the new initiators—introducing this fellowship to others and encouraging them to enter into fellowship with them.
As an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry, John was qualified to teach the truth about him. The readers of this letter had not seen and heard Jesus themselves, but they could trust mat what John wrote was accurate. Believers today are like those second—and third-generation Christians. Though they have not personally seen, heard, or touched Jesus, they have the New Testament record of his eyewitnesses, and they can trust that these eyewitnesses spoke the truth about him.
1:4 Just as the proclamation of the Good News was for others to join the fellowship (1:3), so John was writing these things to encourage the readers’ participation in both the fellowship and the joy that he (John) and the other believers were experiencing. Proclamation produces fellowship; fellowship produces joy. John’s joy would be complete if his readers remained in the fellowship and did not wander off into false teaching. John, caretaker of the churches and “spiritual father” to many of the believers in and around Ephesus, would only be able to experience “complete joy” if his “children” were experiencing the blessings of fellowship with one another and with God.
In Galatians 5:22, joy is a fruit or by-product of the Holy Spirit’s work in believers’ lives. Joy also comes as the result of harmonious relationships among believers (Acts 13:52; Philippians 2:2).
LIVING IN THE LIGHT / 1:5–2:6
When Jesus was on earth, his divine life illuminated the inner lives of his followers. Everywhere he was present, he gave light. This light penetrated people—exposing their sin and revealing divine truth. No one could come into contact with Jesus without being enlightened.
1:5 John’s message emphasized that God is light. Light enables people to do their work. It produces growth in crops; it reveals beauty and provides safety. Light represents what is good, pure, true, holy, and reliable. Light reveals; light shines. God is so completely “light” that there is no darkness in him at all. “Darkness” represents what is sinful and evil. God is untainted by any evil or sin. Thus, “God is light” means that God is perfectly holy and true and that he alone can guide people out of the darkness of sin.
1:6 While “light” has many connotations, this reference points specifically to God’s purity. Therefore, those who claim to have fellowship with God are living in God’s light, trying to live holy and pure lives for him. To claim to belong to God but then to go on living in spiritual darkness is hypocritical. In fact, John says that people are lying. Christ will expose and judge such deceit.
Here John was confronting the first of three claims (see also 1:8 and 1:10) of the false teachers: that people can have fellowship with God and still walk in sin. False teachers who thought that the physical body was evil or worthless taught one of two approaches to behavior: either they insisted on denying bodily desires through rigid discipline, or they approved of gratifying every physical lust because the body was going to be destroyed anyway. Here John was stating that no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality.
1:7 Those who claim to follow the Son must be living in the light of God’s presence. They must be illumined by the truth of God’s character. To “live in the light” requires constant contact with God and no tolerance for dishonesty, hypocrisy, or sin. Living in the light comes from continuous effort to take on Christ’s qualities. This involves complete transformation from within.
Living in the light leads to fellowship with each other. This fellowship among believers results from each believer’s having fellowship with God. True spirituality manifests itself in community fellowship. One cannot say that he or she communes with God and then refuse to commune with God’s people. Such was the case with some of the false teachers of John’s day, and this situation exists among false cults today. Often their followers and leaders claim to have special relationships with God, but they don’t affiliate with other believers. They stay isolated and withdraw from everyone else. John’s point is that the natural result of living in the light (in fellowship with God) should be joyful relationships with other Christians.
Another result of living in the light is that the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from every sin. John emphasized that the death of Christ saves people, not the false teachers’ knowledge. The verb cleanses also means “purifies.” Sin is not only forgiven, it is erased. How does Jesus’ blood do that? In Old Testament times, believers would symbolically transfer their sins to an animal, which they then would sacrifice (see a description of this ceremony in Leviticus 4). The animal died in their place to pay for their sin and to allow them to continue living in God’s favor. God graciously forgave them because of their faith in him and because they obeyed his commandments concerning the sacrifice. Those sacrifices anticipated the day when Christ would completely remove sin. Real cleansing from sin came with lesus, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
Those who “live in the light,” the true believers, will still find themselves at times in sin. Christians will not be made completely perfect until Jesus returns and brings them into his Kingdom. When they do sin, however, God has already made provision to deal with those sins through the blood of his Son. That provision allows God’s people to continue to walk in the light—dealing with sin through confession and receiving his forgiveness so that fellowship with God and with others can remain unhindered.
1:8 John attacked the second claim of the false teachers (see also 1:6 and 1:10): that people could have no sin. The false teachers refused to take sin seriously. In saying that they had no sin, they may have been saying that they did not need Jesus’ death on the cross. They may have considered that Jesus’ death abolished all sin, including the ability to sin. Or, they may have been teaching the false notion that the spirit and body are completely separate and that whatever a person does in the body does not affect the spirit.
John explained that those who believe the possibility of human sinlessness are fooling themselves and refusing to accept the truth as expressed in God’s word. The truth of God’s word does not change: people are sinful. Though Jesus condemned sin once for all, Christians still sin.
1:9 Being God’s people does not mean denying sin (1:8), but confessing it. Because all people are sinners, Jesus had to die. Because sin is not completely eradicated from the lives of those who believe in Jesus, God graciously gave his followers provision for the problem of sin. John explained it here in a nutshell: If we confess … he is faithful and just to forgive.
To confess our sins means to agree with God that an act or thought was wrong, to acknowledge this to God, to seek forgiveness, and to make a commitment to not let it happen again. Confession of sins is necessary for maintaining continual fellowship with God, which in turn will enable people to have good fellowship with members of the church community.
Confession is supposed to free people to enjoy fellowship with Christ. But some Christians do not understand how it works. They feel so guilty that they confess the same sins over and over; then they wonder if they might have forgotten something. Other Christians believe that God forgives them when they confess, but if they died with unconfessed sins, they would be forever lost. These Christians do not understand that God wants to forgive people. He allowed his beloved Son to die just so he could offer them pardon. When people come to Christ, he forgives all the sins they have committed or will ever commit. They don’t need to confess the sins of the past all over again, and they don’t need to fear that God will reject them if they don’t keep their slate perfectly clean. Of course, believers should continue to confess their sins, but not because failure to do so will make them lose their salvation. Believers’ relationship with Christ is secure. Instead, they should confess so that they can enjoy maximum fellowship and joy with him.
That God is faithful means he is dependable and keeps his promises. God promises forgiveness, even in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 31:34; Micah 7:19–20). God wants to forgive his people; he wants to maintain close fellowship with them. But this can only happen when the way to him is cleared of sin’s debris—and that can only happen through confession.
That God is just means that he could not overlook people’s sin. He could not decide to let people get away with sin or to make the penalty less severe. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Sacrifices had been offered for sin, and blood had been spilt from the beginning. This could not change because God does not change. Justice would have to be done in order to decisively deal with sin. But instead of making people pay for their sins, God took the punishment upon himself through his Son. In this way, justice was done, and the way was paved for God to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. Those who confess their sins to God can trust in his forgiveness because they can trust in his character.
1:10 The false teachers not only denied that sin breaks people’s fellowship with God (1:6) and that they had a sinful nature (1:8), but some even had the audacity to make a third claim—that they had not sinned. These false teachers thought that their superior knowledge had placed them out of the realm of sin, rendering them incapable of sinning. This claim went beyond telling a lie (1:6) or merely fooling themselves (1:8); this claim was calling God a liar. God says that all have sinned—otherwise he would not have needed to send his Son. To claim sinlessness treats the Cross with contempt and Christ’s suffering as worthless. To do this, said John, shows that God’s word has no place in our hearts.
John wanted his readers to understand that people who make such a denial of sinful acts do not have the Word of God permeating and changing their lives because the Word of God clearly states throughout that all people sin and all need a Savior (1 Kings 8:46; Psalm 14:3; Isaiah 53:6; 64:6; Romans 3:23; 6:23). People cannot be forgiven if they do not recognize their sin.
2:1 The first step for living in the light (1:5, 7) is to confess sin (1:9). The second step is to forsake all sin (2:1). John emphasized human sinfulness in chapter 1 in order to make his readers despise their sin and try to stay free from it. So that you will not sin means that you will try to stay free from sin by avoiding it, refusing it, but then also confessing it when it does happen. Christians will sin because they have not yet been made perfect. John fully understood this. He did not want his readers to take the inevitability of sinning as an excuse to sin. The tension between the phrases “so that you will not sin” and if you do sin forms a balance between a too harsh or too lenient view of sin. “Believers have no business sinning,” says John, “but when they do sin … God has provided a way for them to be cleansed.”
When believers sin and then come to the Father for forgiveness, there is someone to plead for them before the Father. This “one” is Jesus Christ, the one who pleases God completely. Christ’s righteousness contrasts with humanity’s sinfulness. Not only is Jesus the Judge’s Son, but he also has already paid the penalty. Because Jesus Christ fulfilled the law and paid sin’s penalty for all who believe, he can plead for them on the basis of justice as well as mercy. Believers cannot be punished because someone else has already taken die punishment for them.
2:2 When Jesus Christ speaks to the Father in people’s defense (2:1), he doesn’t falsely claim that they are innocent. Instead, he maintains that they are guilty of sin but then points out that he has already paid the penalty. Because Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for our sins (see also 4:10), he can stand before God as the believers’ mediator. His death satisfied the wrath of God against sin and paid the death penalty for it. He took away not only the sins of John and his fellow believers, but also the sins of all the world.
Christ’s atoning sacrifice is sufficient for the sins of every person in the world. While Christ’s death is sufficient for every sin of every person who ever lived or ever will live, it becomes effectual only for those who confess their sin, accept the sacrifice, and embrace Christ as Lord and Savior. John was not teaching universal salvation—that everyone was saved by Christ whether he or she believed or not. We know this from John’s statements in 2:19–23; obviously the antichrists had not found forgiveness and acceptance in Christ.
2:3–4 Up to this point in the letter, John has been warning against the false teachers and those who left the church to follow them. The people who remained in the church, John’s readers, may have been wondering, “How can we be sure that we belong to him?” In other words, “How can we know that we’re Christians?” This passage gives two ways to know: if you do what Christ says and live as Christ wants.
People can know that they belong to Jesus Christ if they are obeying his commandments. This letter lists several proofs for how people can know Christ and belong to him. Obedience provides one clear indication. This does not mean that believers must follow a list of rules without one slip, nor does it mean that people must demonstrate obedience before they can come to know God. Instead, obedience comes as the natural outworking of a person’s faith and love for the Lord. True believers wholeheartedly accept and submit to God’s will as he has revealed it in his Word. If a person claims to belong to God, but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, he or she is a liar. Since anyone can claim to know Christ, you can check his or her authenticity by seeing whether or not he or she obeys God’s word.
2:5–6 Obedience is linked not merely with knowing God but with loving him. Those who obey God’s word really do love him. By this obedience and love, believers can know that they live in him. Jesus portrayed in human terms absolute obedience to the Father. Anyone who wonders how to obey God can look at Jesus. Those who truly desire to live in God should live their lives as Christ did. To “live as Christ did” doesn’t mean choosing twelve disciples, performing great miracles, and being crucified. People cannot merely copy Christ’s life. Much of what Jesus did had to do with his identity as God’s Son and his special role in dying for sin. Anyone’s claim to live in Christ must be backed up by following his example of complete obedience to God and loving service to people.