AUTHOR
1 John is not like most other letters in the New Testament. It is not addressed to a specific group of people. It does not begin with “Dear So and So” and it does not end with “Yours sincerely, John.” What is called the first letter of John is more like a sermon or a meditation. David Jackman describes 1 John as being like a spiral staircase. He writes,
As you climb the central staircase in a large palace or a stately home, you see the same objects or paintings from a different angle, often with a new appreciation of their beauty. It is rather like that with the great truths John is concerned to state and revisit in the letter. The view gets more wonderful as you climb and the heavenly light shines more and more clearly until you reach the top.[1]
Who created this wonderful spiral staircase? This is one of only two letters in the New Testament (the other one being Hebrews) that does not provide the author’s name. However, the opening verses of 1 John seem to suggest that the author heard, saw, and even touched Jesus of Nazareth. Furthermore, there are many similarities in language and topic between 1 John and the Gospel of John. Finally, it was the unanimous opinion of the Early Church that 1 John was written by John, the disciple of Jesus. The most important attestation to this came from Irenaeus who was a disciple of Polycarp who in turn was a disciple of John.
However, modern scholars have, for several reasons, suggested that 1 John was written by a disciple of John the Evangelist, rather than by John himself. It seems likely that a group of disciples gathered around John the Evangelist, possibly in Ephesus, and that one or more of these disciples was responsible for collecting and editing what John wrote about Jesus in his Gospel. Thus, we have two endings to the Gospel of John: one in chapter 20 and another, added by one of John’s disciples, consisting of the whole of chapter 21. It seems likely that one or more of these disciples of John also collected the meditations we have in 1 John.
DATE
In either case, whether 1 John was written by John the Evangelist or by one or more of his disciples, scholars are agreed that 1 John was most likely written toward the very end of the first century, around AD 90 or perhaps as late as 100, probably from Ephesus in Asia Minor.
THEME
The word “love” appears some 551 times in the Bible. 319 of those times are in the Old Testament. 144 of those are in the Psalms; that is almost one mention of love per psalm. Therefore, if we were looking for the book of the Bible that talks most about love it would be the Psalms.
The New Testament mentions love 232 times. 103 of those are in the letters of Paul. Of course, 1 Corinthians 13 is known as the Love Chapter in the Bible. However, if we were looking for one book of the New Testament that talks more about love than any other, it would be the First Letter of John. 1 John uses the word love 35 times. That is quite a lot for five chapters.
The Bible is sometimes called God’s love letter to humanity. In some sense, I imagine that is true. However, I think if we were looking for one particular letter of love in the Bible, it would have to be 1 John.
So, love, God’s love for us and our love for one another is one of the major themes of 1 John. This letter also addresses many issues related to the Christian life and offers assurance of salvation.
STRUCTURE
I have preached through 1 John more than once and published a collection of my sermons on this letter.[2] Here is my sermon series outline for this book…
- John, Jesus & Our Purpose in Live (1:1-4)
- Walking in the Light (1:5-7)
- Dealing with Sin (1:8-10)
- The Marks of a Christian (2:1-6)
- Where the True Light Shines (2:7-14)
- Something Not to Love (2:15-17)
- Warning about the Anti-Christ (2:18-23)
- Staying on Course (2:24-29)
- Living in God’s Family (3:1-6)
- Who Is a Real Christian? (3:7-10)
- Love One Another (3:11-18)
- Confidence before God (3:19-24)
- Test the Spirits (4:1-6)
- God’s Love & Ours (4:7-12)
- Blessed Assurance (4:13-21)
- Faith & Its Effects (5:1-5)
- Four Witnesses (5:6-12)
- The Benefits of Being a Christian (5:13-21)
KEY CONCEPT: GOD’S LOVE LETTER
Let’s read the first four verses of this wonderful letter…
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1:1-4)
In these opening four verses of 1 John the author tells us three important things: about his purpose, about himself, and about Jesus. Let us look first at what John tells us about his purpose in writing….
First, John tells us it is his desire for his readers to have fellowship with them. As I have already suggested, the “we” and the “us” in the opening of this letter probably refers to the group of disciples gathered around John the Evangelist in Ephesus. John’s desire is that his readers would have fellowship with them, and he states that their fellowship is with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.
Fellowship, koinonia, was a very important word designating a vital experience in the life of the early church. As it was used in classical Greek, koinonia was a common way of expressing the intimate bond of the marriage relationship. Here and throughout the New Testament, koinonia describes the Christian’s personal relationship with God through his Son, Jesus Christ, and the Christian’s relationship with other Christians.
At its most basic level, koinonia means: “sharing in common”. What we share in common as Christians is a personal relationship of love with the Father and the Son; the church is a family.
Thus, John’s purpose in writing this letter, or this sermon, this meditation, is to draw his readers closer to each other and closer to God. That ought to be our purpose in life as well. I wonder: do our words and our actions draw people closer to each other and closer to God?
Second, John says his purpose is to bring to his readers: joy. Joy is at the heart of Christianity. Paul tells us joy is an essential part of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5). If the effect of our words and our actions is to depress others, to bring them down, then we must ask if our words and our actions are truly Christian. Our purpose should be to lift people up into the joy of a relationship with God through his Son Jesus Christ.
Third, John says it is his aim to set Jesus Christ before his readers. “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard…”
What do others see and hear in us? Jesus Christ, or something less? We will never be completely like Jesus in this life, but I believe it should be our goal to become more like him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that our very lives will proclaim him.
What is your purpose in life? What is mine? Is it to draw people closer to each other and closer to God? Is it to bring joy to others, to lift them up rather than tearing them down? Is our purpose to proclaim Christ in all we say and do?
Victor Frankl, who lived through the Holocaust, loved to quote Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.” In other words, having a purpose in life can pull you through almost any circumstance without imploding. I believe the highest and the most stable purpose in life is, as the Westminster Catechism states: “to enjoy God and glorify him forever”. That is the greatest thing we can do in life. However, we will never reach the end of that goal. There is always more to discover about God, enjoy about God, and glorify about God.
In addition to telling us three things about his purpose in writing, John tells us four important things about himself. First, John says that he has heard that which was from the beginning.
The prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures were always ones who had a “word from the Lord”. (Jeremiah 37:17) I think this is one reason why people come to church, or to religious institutions of any kind. They do not come to hear another person’s opinions or guesses about God. They come hoping to hear a word from the Lord. A wonderful way to approach worship is to ask the Lord to speak to you and through and then actively look for the ways God will do just that. It was said of John Brown of Haddington that when he preached, he would often pause as if listening for another voice. William Barclay says, “The true teacher is the man who has a message from Jesus Christ because he has heard his voice.” Whoever the author of 1 John was, he made this very claim, that he had heard the voice of God.
Second, John says that he has seen that which was from the beginning. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes…”
The story is told about the great Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte that someone once said to him, “You preached today as if you had come straight from the presence.”
Whyte’s response was to say, “Perhaps I did.”
We do not see Jesus Christ in the body today as the first disciples did. However, we can see Jesus through the eyes of faith. Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)
Third, John tells us he has gazed upon that which was from the beginning. What is the difference between seeing and gazing? In Greek, the word that is used for seeing is “horan” and simply means to see with our physical eyes. On the other hand, the word that is used for “gazed” or “looked at” is “theasthai” and that word means to gaze at someone or something until one grasps the significance of that person or thing.
1 John echoes the prologue of John’s Gospel where the Evangelist says about Jesus, “We beheld his glory.” The verb that is used in that case is also “theasthai”. The author of 1 John, like the author of the Gospel, has thought long and hard about who Jesus was and is, trying to understand something of the mystery of the incarnation: God taking on our human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.
Fourth, John says that he has touched that which was from the beginning. I think the author of 1 John is doing two things here. First, he is recalling how, in the Gospel of John, the disciple whom Jesus loved reclined on Jesus’ breast or bosom at the Last Supper.
Second, the author of 1 John is responding throughout this letter or meditation to a group of people later called the Docetists. The name “Docetist” comes from the Greek word “dokeo” which means: “to seem”. The Docetists maintained that Jesus only seemed to have a human body. The Docetists believed that if Jesus was truly divine then he would not dirty himself by having a human body.
John’s response to this is strong and categorical. He insists throughout his letter that Jesus did indeed have a human body and that Jesus’ disciples touched this human body; Jesus was not a spirit “seeming” to appear in a body; he really inhabited one.
Drawing these four things together that the author of 1 John tells us about himself, we can see that the author had a real and true experience of the word of life that appeared in Jesus of Nazareth.
William Hendricks writes in his book, Exit Interviews,
There is a splendid moment in the movie Jurassic Park, when world-class paleontologist Allen Grant, who has devoted his life to the study of dinosaurs, suddenly comes face-to-face with real, live prehistoric creatures. He falls to the ground, dumbstruck. The reason is obvious. It is one thing to piece together an informed but nonetheless imperfect image of dinosaurs by picking through fossils and bones. But to encounter an actual dinosaur—well, there can be no comparison.
For many people, spirituality amounts to picking through the artifacts of faith that survive from long ago and far away. In that bygone era, humans saw God, heard his voice, and experienced his awesome, at times terrible, power. But that was then. Today, those kinds of gripping encounters with God—with a God who wasn’t an illusion, but Someone who was real, someone you could see, and touch, and feel—well, there could be no comparison.[3]
We may not be able to see Jesus now with our physical eyes, or to touch him with our hands, but we can nonetheless have a true experience of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit living in us.
This leads to John’s final point in his prologue to this letter: he tells us something important about Jesus. John tells us that Jesus was from the beginning. Again, our author is echoing the prologue to the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word…” The author of 1 John emphasizes the divinity of Jesus.
Yet, in the same breath he emphasizes Jesus’ humanity as well. Jesus had a human body that could be seen and touched, and his human voice could be heard.
Third, John tells us that by God taking on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, he has thereby brought to us and to the world, the word of life that can impart to us the life of the ages.
Again, 1 John is echoing the opening of the Gospel of John which speaks so powerfully about the Word, the Logos, the Greek idea of the reasoning power behind the universe. Both the Gospel and 1 John identify this Logos with Jesus.
1 John is the only place where the exact phrase “the word of life” appears in the Bible. However, Paul talks about “a word of life” in Philippians 2:16. Beginning with Philippians 2:14 we read...
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out a word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing.
Paul and the author of 1 John are both saying essentially the same thing: we have a word to offer to people that can bring them life. That being the case, how can we hold back on offering that word amidst a dying world?
Late on a Friday afternoon—the last appointment of her week—Psychologist Madeline Levine saw a 15-year-old girl who was “bright, personable, highly pressured by her adoring, but frequently preoccupied … parents.” The girl was also “very angry.”
The girl was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt pulled halfway over her hand, with an opening torn in the cuff for her thumb. When the young girl pulled back her sleeve, Levine was startled to find that the girl had used a razor to carve the following word onto her forearm—“EMPTY.”[4]
That one word sums up our world, doesn’t it? Into such an “empty” world, even into our own empty worlds of unreality, God speaks his word of life in Jesus: a life that offers us fullness instead of emptiness, joy instead of despair, life instead of death. And now, the word of life is something, some One really, whom we are called to embrace for ourselves, and carry to others in our world who very much need “the life of the ages”.
[1] Jackman, David, The Message of John’s Letters, Downer’s Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1988, p. 18.
[2] Will Vaus, God’s Love Letter, Hamden, CT: Barnabas Books, 2014.
[3] William D. Hendricks, Exit Interviews (Chicago: Moody, 1993)
[4] Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachingToday.com; sources: Madeline Levine, The Price of Privilege (Harper Perennial, 2008), pp. 3-5; Joy Lanzendorfer, “All and Nothing,” Metro Active, (1-3-07)
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