Summary: Bible - Book of 1 John

The GIST

1 John, a book of the Bible, is five short chapters built on three short sentences: God is light, God is love, and whoever claims to know God must walk in both. It is the first of the three letters that carry John's name and the fourth of the New Testament's "catholic" epistles. Tradition holds that John the Evangelist wrote it at Ephesus in old age. Scholars today have no agreed answer. Most think one person wrote all three letters of John; whether that person also wrote the Gospel of John is disputed, though the two share a great deal of language and thought. The letter is usually placed at Ephesus between about 95 and 110 AD.

It hardly looks like a letter. It has no greeting and no signature, and its thought circles back on itself, returning to the same few themes and adding a little each time. Behind it is a crisis: people have left the community and are teaching a different Jesus. The writer, who calls his readers "little children", writes to steady those who stayed and to give them ways to tell the real thing from the false: right living, a true confession of Jesus come in the flesh, and love.

What It Says

What we have seen and touched (1:1 to 4). The opening is a rush of testimony: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life". The stress falls on the senses. The life "was manifested", made visible, and the writer speaks as one who met it. He passes it on for a reason, "that ye also may have fellowship with us", a fellowship that is "with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." And he states the first of several purposes: "these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."

Walking in the light (1:5 to 2:2). The message itself comes in one line: "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." A series of tests follows, each beginning "If we say". To claim fellowship with God while living in darkness is a lie. To claim to be without sin is self-deception: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." The honest alternative carries a promise: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The writer does not want his readers to sin, but he knows they will, and he gives them somewhere to turn: "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous", who is the atoning sacrifice "for the sins of the whole world."

The test of obedience and the old-new commandment (2:3 to 17). How does anyone know that they know God? "And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments." Whoever claims to abide in him "ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." The commandment in view is not new, since they have had it from the beginning, and yet it is new, "because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." Its content is love for one's brother and sister, and the test is blunt: "He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now."

A brief, almost poetic passage addresses the whole community by turns, children, fathers and young men, assuring them that their sins are forgiven, that they know the one who is from the beginning, and that they are strong. Then comes a warning about misplaced affection: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." By "the world" the writer means a way of desiring, which he sums up as "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life". None of it lasts: "the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

Those who went out (2:18 to 29). Now the crisis is named. "Little children, it is the last time", and the sign of it is that "even now are there many antichrists". The word refers here to people the readers knew: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us". Their error concerns Jesus. "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?" To deny the Son is to lose the Father too. Against these persuasive voices the readers have what they need. They have "an unction from the Holy One", an anointing that teaches them, and they have the message they heard at the start. The instruction is simply to stay: "And now, little children, abide in him".

Children of God (chapter 3). The tone lifts into wonder: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God". The present is astonishing and the future more so: "it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." Such a hope changes behaviour. The writer draws his sharpest contrast between two families, the children of God, marked by doing right and loving, and the children of the devil. The Son of God appeared "that he might destroy the works of the devil."

Love is again the test, and Cain, who killed his brother, is its opposite. Hatred is murder in seed: "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer". The pattern of love is the cross: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Most of the time that means something less dramatic and more demanding. If someone has the world's goods and sees a brother in need and closes his heart, "how dwelleth the love of God in him?" Hence the rule: "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." There is comfort here for the uneasy conscience: "For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." The whole duty is gathered into one double command, to believe in the name of God's Son, "and love one another".

Testing the spirits; God is love (chapter 4). Not every inspired-sounding voice is to be trusted: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world." The test is what a teacher says about Jesus: "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God". The readers need not be intimidated, "because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world."

Then the letter reaches its summit. "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." And the reverse: "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." This love is not an abstraction. It was shown when God sent his Son, and it began on God's side: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us". The consequence is immediate: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." Nobody has seen God, but where people love one another, God lives in them. Such love drives out dread of judgment: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear". The order of things is fixed in a single short verse: "We love him, because he first loved us." And the claim to love God is tested, as always, on the ground: "he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

Faith, witness and assurance (chapter 5). The closing chapter ties belief, love and obedience into one knot. To love God is to keep his commandments, "and his commandments are not grievous." Faith is what wins: "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." Jesus came "by water and blood", and the Spirit bears witness. The testimony amounts to this: "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." Then the purpose the whole letter has been driving at: "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life". Out of that certainty comes confidence in prayer. Three statements beginning "we know" bring the letter to its end, followed by a last, abrupt word: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

Why It Matters

Scholars connect the letter with an early dispute about whether Jesus was truly human. Some held that his earthly form was only an appearance, a view called docetism and associated with the groups that became the Gnostics. Against it the letter insists on a Jesus who came in the flesh and shed blood, and its opening appeal to eyes and hands may make the same point. The people who "went out" are understood as holders of such views.

Whether the author of the letter also wrote the Gospel has been argued since the twentieth century, when critics pointed to differences of style; most scholars see direct borrowing between the two. Two approaches to the letter's purpose have been influential, one reading its tests as tests of life, the other as tests of fellowship. One verse has a history of its own. The line in chapter 5 about three that bear record in heaven, "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost", known as the Johannine Comma, began as a note in Latin copies, appears in no Greek manuscript before the fifteenth century, entered the King James Version by way of Erasmus, and is left out of modern critical translations. Augustine wrote a commentary on the letter around 415.

Who Should Read It

Anyone who wants the heart of Christian faith in plain words. Its vocabulary is that of a child and its demands are those of a lifetime. It is for doubters who need assurance, for the confident who need testing, and for every community that has to learn how to love the people actually in front of it.