Light, Love, and Law - Introducing 1 John

Introduction

We are now embarking upon our third entry into the five book series we have internally labeled “The Inner Circle” epistles. These are the letter written by the apostles that were part of the special group of three disciples that were especially close to Jesus Himself during His earthly ministry.

We began with the two epistles of Peter. Peter is a fisherman, he’s a preacher, and he’s a pastor, and that shines through in his writing. He’s direct, he’s pastorally helpful, and he writes fairly simply.

In Peter’s first epistle, he dealt with the believer’s hope of glory that sustains their livelihood in the trials and tribulations of this life. We might summarize this first letter of Peter with this title: Walking the road from suffering to glory.

Peter’s second epistle deals with false teachers who have infiltrated the church and begun propagating teaching that Jesus is not, in fact, coming again. This teaching removes hope and assurance that Christ will return for his church, and gives wicked people license to sin without fear of a future judgment. Peter deals with the specific false teaching while also demonstrating principles of how to deal with false teachers in general.

We now move to 1 John, and perhaps surprisingly, John takes up some similar themes of false teaching. John is writing to address other types of false teaching and unethical behavior, and reinforces the principles that Peter taught us in his second epistle.

John’s first gospel is notorious for being very difficult to outline and being without a central theme or main message. I think is partly due to a failure to understand John the man and John the author. So I want to spend some time tonight dealing with some introductory issues that I believe will help shed light on John’s principle points, and give us a roadmap and some guideposts for our study over the next few weeks.

So with that in mind, let’s begin:

Authorship

The first introductory question to be dealt with when considering a Biblical book is who wrote it. In dealing with the Bible we are dealing with 40 human authors with unique perspectives and contributions. So we would do well to understand some of the history of some of these authors to help us understand what they write. With John it is no different.

What do we know about the apostle John?

I think a few facts are worth our time tonight.

First, he was an apostle. This means he was an eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus Christ and was commission as a messenger on a mission. The message? The gospel of Jesus Christ. The mission? Disciple the nations in grace and truth. John’s writing is profoundly affected by his ministry calling. Much in the same way that Peter and Paul emphasize their mission and ministry as the foundation of their writing, John, emphasizes that also.

Secondly, John was an eyewitness of Christ. This comes out in the opening words of the epistle as John uses vivid sensory language to describe his experience of Christ’s ministry and resurrection.

Third, John was a prolific author. In terms of total bibliography, John is tied for second with all Biblical authors for number of books written at 5. He is tied with Moses and second only to Paul. In terms of chapter count, only Paul surpasses John in the New Testament. If we want to understand John as he writes in this first, epistle, we also have to understand his other writings.

Fourth, John was an elderly author. We have reason to believe that John’s writings were the last to be written, toward the end of the first century. Tradition holds that John lived well into his 90s and likely wrote these letters at that time in his life. We are not reading the starry eyed dogmas of a young man, but the wizened pastoral wisdom of an elder.

Fifth, John writes as one of, if not the closest human companion of Jesus the Messiah. John plays a central role in all the gospel accounts, and is the one whom Jesus commissions to care for his mother after His death and ascension. He was one of only three to witness the transfiguration. The closeness of their relationship is perhaps illustrated most clearly by the private exchange between the two at the Last Supper regarding the identity of the betrayer. He was the only disciple present at the cross, and was the first disciple to enter the empty tomb. John’s writing, even this late in his life, is profoundly influenced by the close and intimate personal relationship He had with Jesus during His earthly ministry.

All of these characteristics profoundly affect what John writes and what is close to his heart as he writes this epistle.

Audience

The next question we want to consider is the audience of the epistle. Unlike every other epistle, and even other epistles written by John himself, no clear audience is presented. The letter does not appear to be written to a specific person, church, or region, like many letters are.

What this would seem to intend is that John is intentionally writing for a broader and more general audience. If we follow the tradition of the early church and place the writing of this epistle at the very end of the canon, we can rightly surmise that John has become an eyewitness to the worldwide spread of the church. He has likely observed the church in Rome, the veritable capital of the world at the time, receive Paul’s letter, then be influenced by Paul’s ministry during his imprisonment, and then seen the influence of Peter in the city as well. He has seen the impact Timothy has in Ephesus, another prominent city, and he has seen the ministry of the other apostles and early church leaders fulfill the commission recorded by Luke in Acts 1 to take the gospel to the end of the earth. John, more than any other apostle, has witnessed the global broadening of the church and therefore understands the value of a letter written not to a local church, but to the universal church.

What John presents here are, in a unique way, universal principles for the church. And as we will see over the course of this study, John’s primary concerns are concerns that ought to come to bear upon the church in every area and in every age. Things like the centrality of love for God and neighbor as fulfillment of the Law, the importance of Christ’s humanity and deity, the hope of the beatific vision, and much more are wrapped up into five timeless chapters.

Purpose

Oftentimes when reading an epistle, the purpose statement can be hidden or obscured. It’s rare for Paul or Peter to come right and tell you in explicit terms “This is why I am writing to you.”

John, on the other hand, gives four purpose statements in one letter.

The breadth of purpose also speaks to the universal application of the letter, and may well give us the under-the-hood answer as to why John doesn’t specify a certain church, region, or individual as the recipient of his letter. His purpose is simply too broad for a single person or region.

So what are the four purposes? Why does John write?

1 John 1:3 LSB

what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

1 John 1:4 LSB

And these things we are writing, so that our joy may be made complete.

1 John 2:1 LSB

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;

1 John 5:13 LSB

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

Let’s dig a little deeper into these purpose statements:

John is writing for the purpose of Trinitarian Christian fellowship. In other words, John is writing in pursuit of what Jesus prayed in John 17:20-21

John 17:20–21 LSB

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

John’s goal in writing is that, according to our baptism by which we are unified with Christ, we would have union with the Triune Godhead. John writes so that we might participate in the life of God, and in that participation, we would also participate in the life of the church. For John, to participate, to engage, to lean into the life of the church, is to participate, to engage, to lean into the life of God Himself. This is what Paul meant in Romans 12 when he spoke of each individual member of the church as a member of Christ, and also individually as members of one another.

This first purpose statement is also laced with overtones of church unity against false teaching. As we will see, John also has an eye on false teachers that have infiltrated the church, and so he writes so that these Christians would have confidence that they are in league with the apostles, and by extension in league with God Himself. John therefore is writing to help separate the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the tares, and he does this in the context of unified mutual fellowship between believers one to another and between the church and God.

John is writing for the purpose of joy-fulfillment. 1:4 says that he is writing so that their joy may be made complete. This is explained more clearly in 3 John 4

3 John 4 LSB

I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

John is writing so that his children, these believers, would walk in the truth and thereby make his joy complete. John demonstrates the heart of a true pastor here. Anyone who has been assigned the care of souls knows there is no greater joy than watching those assigned to their care grow in grace and truth. John sets the example of that here, and writes specifically for the purpose of their growth in grace and truth, so that as these little spiritual children grow, his joy may grow likewise. We may think of this in terms of earthly parenting. What great joy it is for parents to watch their children grow up. The first full night of sleep, the first food from a jar, the first steps, the first day of school, so on and so forth. The growth of children brings great joy to their parents, and so also the growth of these Christians brings great joy to John, and he writes with that growth and subsequent joy in mind.

John is writing for the purpose of sanctification. 2:1 tells us that he is writing so that these hearers may not sin. We’ll get into specifics when we get to chapter 2, but John’s point is that he wants these believers, and indeed all believers, to have an ever-decreasing presence of active sin in their lives, words, and behaviors. John is concerned to promote holy, lawful behavior amongst those who claim the name of Christ.

John is writing for the purpose of assurance. 5:13 tells us this. John wants to infuse in his readers a steadfast assurance of eternal life. This is perhaps the most cited purpose of 1 John, and this verse has made 1 John a book that many pastors and Christians, rightly, use as a kind of simple measuring rod for helping others grow in their assurance of salvation.

Themes

John weaves several big picture themes through the book that serve as important guideposts as we look to understand what he has for us in this letter.

Doctrinal

We see a couple of doctrinal themes woven through the text of 1 John.

The doctrine of divine light. John’s first major doctrinal declaration in 1 John comes in 1:5, and it is this: God is light. This is a statement of divine essence. We often think of God in terms of what He does, but John portrays God simply in terms of who He is in His essence. This statement opens up a Pandora’s box of theological implications, all of which run throughout 1 John.

God is light means that God is simple. He just is light. He is not part light and part other things. He is all light, He is absolute light, He is eternal light.

God is light means that God is pure. In the very next phrase John clarifies that “in Him there is no darkness at all.” For God to be light is for Him to be absolutely, eternally, and infinitely righteous, holy, and good.

God is light means that God is knowledge. Light is often portrayed as knowledge in the Scriptures, since light is what makes that which was previously invisible, now visible. For God to be light then is for Him to be the source of all knowledge and truth that exists in the world.

The doctrine of Christ as high priest. This comes out at the beginning of chapter 2 where John describes Christ as mediator and propitiation. Drawing on the language of the Leviticult, John teaches us about who Christ is as our high priest, both in His eternally satisfactory sacrifice and in His eternal mediation on our behalf before His Father.

The doctrine of homousious. Homousious is a Greek word used by the church fathers who wrote the Nicene creed to describe the unity of essence, substance, and nature, between the Father and the Son. 200 years prior, John dealt with the concept in 1 John 2. He tells us plainly that you cannot have the Father without the Son, and therefore we must understand the Father and the Son to be in an eternal and essential unity of substance, essence, and nature. As the creed says:

Historic Creeds and Confessions Nicene Creed

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

This doctrine is front and center for John, as we will continue to see.

The doctrine of the beatific vision. This doctrine has fallen out of favor in recent years, but was a favorite meditation of the medieval church. John teaches it in 3:2 - the blessed hope that, upon our sight of the glorified Christ, we will be transformed fully and finally info His image.

The doctrine of divine love. Just as John declared God to be light in chapter 1, He also declares God to be love in chapter 4.

Practical

These five doctrinal emphases lead directly into John’s ethical, pastoral, and practical themes.

If God is light, then the Christian ought to walk in the light.

If Christ is our high priest, we possess an immutable assurance of salvation.

If the Father and Son are of one essential substance, then we must confess the Son as the the only begotten Messiah, eternally begotten of the Father, light of light, true God from true God, begotten, not created.

If we will be like Christ when we see Him in His glory, we must fix our eyes on that hope that we might be continually pure as He is pure.

If God is love, then His church must live in that love, expressed in love for God and love for the brethren.

Polemical

John’s doctrinal and practical themes necessarily come with some polemical themes as well

Antinomianism. John is concerned to warn and guard the church against antinomianism, or the teaching that because of the free abundance of grace available in Christ, Christians now have license to sin wantonly. John weaves this theme throughout, and has no reservations about rebuking those who claim Christ and yet continue to walk in sin.

Arianism. Though John would not have known this heresy by the name we know it as today, he nevertheless speaks to it. This is the false teaching that Jesus is not truly God in essence and substance. John provides in his epistle the foundation for the Nicene Creed, part of which we quoted earlier, and in many ways prefigures the same arguments that the Nicene Fathers would make 200 years later to defend the doctrine of Christ’s divinity and the sameness of His nature, essence, and substance with God the Father.

The Interpretive Key to 1 John

As we wrap up this brief introduction to 1 John tonight, I want to share something with you that will set the tone for the rest of our study over the course of the next few weeks and months.

If you want to understand the doctrine, ethics, and polemics of 1 John, if you want to understand his purpose in writing, if you want to get the foundation for everything he writes, you have to understand John’s gospel. A robust understanding of John’s gospel will open wide the windows of understanding as we seek to think John’s thoughts after him in this epistle.

Let me briefly share with you what I mean. Someone turn to John 1. Someone else turn to 1 John 1.

Do we sense the similarities here? Do we see the way in which 1 John grows organically out of John’s gospel? In the gospel, we behold Christ. In the epistle, we proclaim Christ and walk in His footsteps.

So here’s my challenge to you as we prepare to jump into this study of 1 John: read John’s gospel in parallel with his first letter. I’ve placed a handy chart that will fit in your Bible on the back table. I would encourage you for the next week or two: immerse yourself in these two profound books from the pen of John. I promise you that there will be great reward as we seek to mine the riches of all that the Spirit has for us in 1 John.