Intro to 1 John

Why 1 John?

Hello everyone! Welcome back to the Anchor! The past two weeks have looked at the questions who is Jesus and what is the church? Both of these answers are going to help us as we look at what it means to have a relationship with God and be a community. This fall semester we invite you to join us on a journey, a journey to study and explore the letter of 1 John.

1 John will help us as we continue asking the question, what does it mean to have a relationship with God? If you attend church or if you have been in Christian circles for some time you might have heard this phrase, but what does it mean? What does it mean that He is with us and can help us through the situations of life?

Hand out Bibles

Does everyone here have a Bible?

Awesome!

Before we begin I want to ask you guys for some help. The next few weeks I’m going to need your help when we go to somewhere in the Bible. When I say the passage that we will be studying for the week, can you ask the question: “What’s the context??”

Whenever anyone talks about the Bible or whenever we read the Bible it’s sooooo important that we ask this question. If you were to have never watched the Mario movie and watched a random scene, you might have a totally different idea of the message of the movie then if you understood the context of that scene!

What’s the context?

When we approach the context of a passage in the Bible it’s important we address these questions

Who wrote the passage?

What surrounds this passage before/after?

When was it written?

Who was it written to?

Why was it written?

You guys have the permission to ask any of these questions whenever we are talking about a passage or verse in the Bible.

Who wrote 1 John?

Now this might be an incredibly obvious answer to everyone. But surprisingly, this is something that church historians had to dig deep to find out.

From the earliest times the church has held that John the brother of James and son of Zebedee is the author.

An interesting story from the gospels is the story of him and his brother wanting Jesus to destroy a few Samaritans in Luke 9. Jesus rebukes them and reminds them of the truth. Elsewhere we have hints that John and James are pretty intense/emotional/stubborn because we see they receive the nickname “Sons of Thunder”.

What we will see in this letter is that John has changed a lot sense his early days of wishing Jesus to absolutely demolish people.

Because we don’t see John mention his own name in this letter, church historians and Theologians have put together the context clues within and outside the writing to discover John as the author.

It’s important that we have a basic understanding of these clues, because someone could always ask us, “are you sure about this, how do we know?”

internal - parallel grammar/writing technique as the gospel of John - same themes and imagery used - Light, Love, Abiding, Word, eternal life.

external evidence - One of John’s friends, Papias who quite literally knew him, writes about how John wrote this letter in his writing Exposition of Oracles of the Lord that he writes a couple decades after John’s death.

When was 1 John written?

Some of John’s disciples, one of which who’s name is Polycarp frequently converse of John’s writings in their own letters.

So it must be before these of John really began their works, many church historians are going to say anywhere from 67-90 AD is when the letter was written.

Who was it written to?

John is writing to the churches in Asia Minor (once again this is Church history and tradition based on the writings of John’s disciples and then those disciples). One of the primary churches in Asia minor we see elsewhere in scripture is the church of Ephesus (think the Ephesians).

Why was it written?

One of the commentaries I read through gives to main reasons for the writing of 1 John:

To fight against false teaching

And to reassure believers

False teachers were going around spreading lies about who the messiah was to these churches, teaching weird messed up things. They changed the story. It would be like if Gabe and I decided that we didn’t think the Mario movie was good so we went around and told people about things in the Mario movie that didn’t happen, like it was awesome when Sonic showed up and ate pizza. Or realistic Kirby is actually the main character and the whole movie is a bad dream he’s having.

The other thing John is addressing is how we as believers can know we have salvation and know we can’t lose it.

1 John 1:1-4

1 John 1:1 ESV

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—

Okay let’s break down what’s going on here, does anyone remember how the Bible begins?

In the beginning God - so there’s a connection already

Immediately we see a list of past passive verbs from the author - He writes that we have heard and seen and looked and touch - what was from the beginning - What is the ‘that’ he’s talking about?

Let’s keep reading to find out

1 John 1:2 ESV

the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—

so what he is writing concerns the word of life and this life was made manifest - apparent/obvious

and the writer says that he and others have seen it. -> John is saying that we’ve (refering to the Apostles and early christians) have seen this. The life!

He’s proclaiming and telling us about the eternal life -> this life was with the God the Father and made known/manifest to us

1 John 1:3 ESV

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

So they are proclaiming this that we the church can have fellowship with them! Their fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ!

So let’s answer that question now -> the that from verses 1 and 2 - if we look at John’s other writing in his book we see that which was from the beginning is the word

John 1:1–2 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

An author of a commentary writes how John draws equal attention to the “Word proclaimed” (the message) and the “Word as a person”, the message and the person can’t be separated! 1 Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 51.

Jesus came to give the message which is Himself! That’s why we hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ mentioned by Paul because Jesus is the good news!!

Jesus is the gospel!! It’s about Him!

So John is writing this letter and teling us about the message / Jesus so we can have fellowship with him, but how. How can we go from simply reading this to having fellowship with him? How do I get to know Him?

We will see as we keep reading in the next few weeks!

1 John 1:4 ESV

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

John is giving us an invitation, an invitation to believe and know who God is. To join the fellowship -> the family!

Romans 8:15–17 ESV

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

We are part of the fellowship and family!

But what does that look like in every day life? How do I know if I’m part of this family?

Questions of the week?

One of the important things we have to understand about how the gospel is presented a lot - escapes hell go to heaven -> whereas instead of just a get out hell idea -> invitation to rich and abundant relationship

So after reading all of this I have a few questions for you, which you can talk about with your leaders in small group:

What exactly is eternal life?