First John-Introduction-First John: The Recipients of First John
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Thursday February 9, 2017
First John: The Recipients of First John
Lesson # 7
1 John 2:12-14, 19; 3:1; 5:13 clearly indicate that 1 John was addressed to believers.
The letter itself does not indicate who they were and where they were located.
The fact that it mentions no one by name suggests it was a circular letter sent to Christians in a number of places.
There are many indications throughout the epistle that John was writing to believers in Jesus Christ who were thus regenerate.
First of all, he calls his readers “my little children” in 1 John 2:1.
In 1 John 2:2, John says “and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
In this passage, John is distinguishing he and his readers from the rest of the world, and the world in this passage is an obvious reference to unbelievers.
The issues John discusses throughout 1 John also make clear that entire epistle is written to believers and not unbelievers.
In this epistle, he was attempting to protect the church in Ephesus from false teachers teaching false doctrines.
One of the issues was that some were denying that our Lord was a human being (early form of Gnosticism).
Thus, the reason for John’s statements in the prologue of the epistle in 1 John 1:1-4.
John is saying if you deny the incarnation like the false teachers, then you can’t have fellowship with God because fellowship is made possible because of the God-Man Jesus Christ and His death on the cross.
In 1 John 2:7, John calls his readers “beloved” and “little children” (1 John 2:12), “children” (1 John 2:13, 18), he tells them they have an “anointing” in 1 John 2:20 and in 1 John 2:26 he mentions these false teachers, trying to deceive his readers.
In 1 John 2:15-17, he warns them to not love the world.
Then, in 1 John chapter 3, he is talking to his readers about loving one another as Christ loves which is something an unbeliever cannot do because they don’t have the Spirit.
In 1 John chapter 4:1-6, he tells his readers to test the spirits since they have the capacity to discern error in teaching because they have the Spirit who is called the “anointing” in 1 John 2:20.
Then, in 1 John 4:7-21, he is talking to them about love again.
In 1 John 5 John talks to his readers about overcoming the “world” i.e. the cosmic system of Satan.
These are all things he would never discuss with unbelievers since he would simply command them to believe on the Lord Jesus to be saved if he were talking to unbelievers.
Akin writes “Tradition is strong that John spent his latter years in the city of Ephesus ministering to the churches of Asia Minor. It would seem reasonable to see the place of writing for the three letters also as Ephesus. Internal evidence would indicate that John was an aged man when he wrote the letters. Church tradition says John was at Ephesus, ‘remaining among them permanently until the time of Trajan.’ Trajan reigned as Roman emperor from A.D. 98–117. This would indicate that John died toward the end of the first century, setting a terminus for his writings. A date of ca. A.D. 85–100 is reasonable.”
Dan Wallace writes “The issue of audience, place of writing, and form of the epistle are bound up together. Since this letter sounds very much like a homily, lacking the typical features of a letter, there is the distinct possibility that it was intended to function in this manner to some degree. It may well have been a circular letter to a fairly restricted circle. Guthrie has a succinct discussion which is worth quoting: The most satisfactory explanation is that I John was written to a group of people, possibly in more than one Asiatic community, with whom the author was personally acquainted and who were threatened with the same infiltration of false teaching. The following reasons have led to the widely-held view that Asia was the destination of this epistle and of 2 and 3 John: the external tradition associates the Gospel with John at Ephesus; the association of the Johannine literature with the Apocalypse would also suggest Asia Minor; the gnosticizing teaching reflected in these epistles is strongly connected with this area. Moreover, the earlier known use of I John comes from the same area (i.e., in Polycarp’s epistle). Two points need to be added to this summary: (1) If John was in Ephesus at the time of composition, it is probable that Ephesus was not the destination of this letter. Rather, it was sent to several of the churches in the surrounding areas. Almost surely one such church would have been at Colossae, for the same kind of heretics were condemned in Paul’s letter to the Colossians just a few years earlier. (2) The audience was almost certainly made up mainly of Gentiles. Not only is this seen in the kind of heresy which is fought (antinomian, docetic—neither of which was found among Jewish Christian sects), but the epistle ends with the warning, ‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols’ (5.21), an admonition which has great relevance for Gentile Christians, almost none for Jewish Christians. ”