First John-Introduction-The Johannine Epistles
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Wednesday January 25, 2017
First John: The Johannine Epistles
Lesson # 1
The New Testament contains five books traditionally ascribed to the apostle John.
The epistles of John are foundational to what is known in the New Testament as Johannine Christianity.
Some expositors consider the epistles of John to be the final books written in the Bible.
It is clear that they are certainly the final books that John wrote.
John served at the end of his life as a pastor in the city of Ephesus, which was located in the Roman province of Asia and what is now known as Turkey.
Paul had founded the church.
It has been the belief of the church throughout the centuries that John wrote his gospel first, his epistles second and finally Revelation just before he died.
But many scholars towards the close of the twentieth century now believe he wrote his epistles last.
This would mean that John wrote his first epistle after his exile to the island of Patmos, which places the date between 75-100 A.D.
He died in Ephesus and was buried there.
The Basilica of John was built over the grave of John by Justinian in the fifth century A.D.
Of the writings of John, three of these are headed as epistles or letters.
But only 2 and 3 John are strictly to be regarded as letters.
By contrast, 1 John lacks the typical stylistic features of a letter.
It has no salutation at its beginning nor greeting at its conclusion.
It is not, however, to be regarded as a literary “epistle,” since it bears all the marks of being addressed to a specific situation in some church or group of churches known to the author.
It is probably best to regard it as a tract written to deal with a definite problem; we may perhaps think of it as a written sermon or pastoral address.
1 John bears all the marks of a message from a devoted pastor who had a love and concern for a definite group of believers.
All three epistles were written to deepen the spiritual life of the churches while guarding against false teaching.
The false teachers had arisen within the church (1 John 2:19; 4:4).
John fears that such a splinter group will lead believers astray (1 John 2:26-27; 3:7; 2 John 7).
He calls them “antichrists” (1 John 2:18-22; 4:3; 2 John 7) for denying that Jesus had come in the flesh (1 John 4:1-13; 2 John 7; also 1 John 2:18-25; 4:15).
Like the Gospel of John, the epistles of John are built on the foundation blocks of love, truth, sin, world, life, light, and Paraclete.
It emphasizes the great themes of fellowship, knowing, believing, walking, and abiding.
These words seem simple on the surface.
But in the hands of one who had pondered the mystery and meaning of Jesus’ existence in human form, they yield many deep truths.
For John, the gospel is centered upon the Son of God becoming a human being (1 John 1:1-4).
The incarnation of the Son of God is thus the incarnation of eternal life (1 John 1:2).
Eternal life is only available through faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ (1 John 5:11). “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).
The message of life is the alpha (1 John 1:2) and omega (1 John 5:20), the beginning and the end, of the epistle.
Through faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit has transferred the Christian from death to life (1 John 3:14).
Jesus Christ’s death on the cross destroyed the works of the devil (1 John 3:8).
His death also propitiated the Father (1 John 2:2; 4:10) and also provided the forgiveness of sins (1 John 1:7-9; 2:12; 3:5).
The Lord Jesus is the Christian’s “advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1) who takes away the guilt of our wrongdoing and gives the Christian confidence to approach the Bema Seat Evaluation of the Church (1 John 2:28; 4:17).
Jesus Christ is both the Son of God and the bearer of sin.
He is the eternal demonstration and expression of the love of God.
For John, love is not a feeling toward others but that which is produced by the Holy Spirit when the believer obeys the Spirit’s command to love one another.
The love produced by the Spirit in the Christian is expressed by word and action that benefits one’s neighbor.
As to His nature, God is love (1 John 4:8,16), and He acts in love on the Christian’s behalf (1 John 4:9-10).
Love, therefore, is something one does, by keeping God’s commandments (1 John 2:2-5; 5:3), “in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).
Furthermore, above all, by loving others (1 John 2:9-11; 3:10), the apostle John teaches that it is hypocritical to profess love for God and to show hatred toward others (1 John 4:20).
The love of God does not take the Christian out of this world but on the contrary, it draws them into fellowship with God (1 John 1:3) and with other Christians obeying the Spirit (1 John 1:7).
First John has been called by some the sanctum sanctorum of the New Testament by some expositors.
J. Vernon McGee states, “It takes the child of God across the threshold into the fellowship of the Father’s home. It is the family epistle. Paul’s epistles and all the other epistles are church epistles, but this is a family epistle and should be treated this way.”
The epistle of 1 John appears to have been written by the apostle John in the last decade of the first century and was addressed to believers located in the city of Ephesus, in the Roman province of Asia, which today, is the western border of Turkey.
The purpose of 1 John was to protect believers from an incipient form of Gnostic teaching and to present to them principles that would help them to restore and maintain fellowship with God and confirm that they are experiencing fellowship with God.
The Gnostic teachers had infiltrated Ephesus and the churches around the Roman Empire.
Gnosticism was amalgamation of Greek philosophy and Christianity and denied the deity of Christ and taught that there was no such thing as a sin nature and that you do not have to confess your sins after confession to be restored to fellowship with God.
If John’s readers obeyed the Gnostic teaching, it would prevent them from experiencing and enjoying fellowship with God.
Therefore, the epistle of 1 John presents to the believer eternal spiritual principles regarding how to maintain and sustain fellowship with God, which will protect them from the lies of false teachers.
These principles also would help John’s readers to confirm that they are in fact experiencing fellowship with God.