Bible Guide

The epistle has traditionally been ascribed to John the apostle, though the author's name does not appear in the letter. Yet it is plain from the tone of the letter that the writer possessed spiritual authority. He placed himself among the eyewitnesses to the incarnate life of the Lord Jesus (1:1–2). Early Christian writers, including Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, cited the epistle as John's, and leaders in the early church assumed that John the apostle wrote this letter. Evidence supporting apostolic authorship includes the similar vocabulary between the Gospel of John and this epistle. Such terms as 'light' and 'eternal life' feature in both writings. The author claimed that he was a companion of Christ during his earthly ministry (1:1–4). His description of his readers as 'dear children' (2:1) indicates a person of sufficient authority to address his audience in this manner. All of these features point to apostolic authorship. Some who question apostolic authorship favor an authorship by 'John the elder,' mentioned in Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 3.39). But some feel that the term 'John the elder' is merely an alternate way of referring to John the apostle. Moving forward with the understanding that John was the author, we can trace who John was as a person and how he's portrayed in the Gospels. When John and his brother James, the sons of Zebedee, began to follow Jesus, they were apparently quite young and enthusiastic. Once when the disciples were passing through Samaria on the way to Jerusalem, James and John went on ahead to find lodging in a village. When the Samaritans, who hated the Jews as much as they were hated by the Jews, learned that the party was traveling to Jerusalem, they refused them shelter. Furious, James and John confronted Jesus. 'Lord,' they asked, 'do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' (Luke 9:54). Their nickname was appropriate: 'Thunderers.' Another time the disciples saw a man driving out demons in Jesus's name, but the man was not one of their company. 'We tried to stop him,' John reported, 'because he was not following us' (Mark 9:38). John was again corrected by Jesus because his zeal had missed the spirit of his Master. A final Gospel incident (Matt. 20:20–28) completes John's portrait. He and his brother whisper privately to their mother. Shortly after, she approaches Jesus. Could the places of authority at Jesus's right and left hand be reserved for her sons when the Lord takes power in his kingdom? Jesus explained to the mother and her two sons that he did not have the authority to grant such a request. Later, the other disciples heard of the pair's attempt to gain advantage, and they reacted with understandable anger. Then Jesus explained to the Twelve that greatness in his kingdom is not found in authority but in servanthood, a servanthood far removed from the self-concerned attitude of James and John. But when we come to John's writings, we meet a different man—a man whose favorite word was love, a man who was gentle, so selfless that he hardly mentioned himself or his feelings, except as they related to the needs of the men and women to whom he ministered. We meet a man who was transformed, who demonstrated in his own personality the Bible promise that we can be changed by beholding Jesus (2 Cor. 3:18). John emphasized the love Jesus had for him even in the days before he matured; thus, he calls himself 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.'

The letters of John, and particularly 1 John, were probably written around 85–90 CE as a response to an internal crisis among believers. John's final work, Revelation, was written near the end of the first century. Continuing with Johannian authorship, John the apostle wrote these letters, and especially 1 John, sometime during the close of the first century. This would give time for the development of the Gnostic false theological and philosophical systems and would fit into the terminology of 1 John ('little children'), which seems to imply an older man talking to a younger group of believers. Jerome says John lived 68 more years after Jesus's crucifixion. This timing would fit with this tradition. This epistle seems to have been written after his Gospel, as it assumes the reader's acquaintance with the Gospel facts and Christ's words, and also with the special aspect of the incarnate Word, as God manifest in the flesh (1 Ti 3:16), set forth more fully in his Gospel. The tone of address, as a father addressing his 'little children' (the term recurs in 1 Jn 2:1, 12, 13, 18, 28; 4:4; and 5:21), accords with the view that this epistle was written in John's old age, perhaps about 90 CE. In 1 John 2:18, 'it is the last time' probably does not refer to any particular event (as the destruction of Jerusalem, which was then many years in the past) but to the nearness of the Lord's coming, as proved by the rise of Antichristian teachers, the mark of the last time. It was the Spirit's purpose to keep the Church always expecting Christ as returning at any moment. The whole Christian age is thus the last time, in the sense that no other dispensation is to arise till Christ comes (compare this to 'these last days' in Hebrews 1:2). Ephesus may be conjectured to be the place where it was written. The controversial allusion to the influence of Gnostic heresy accord with Asia Minor being the place, and the last part of the apostolic age, the time, of writing this epistle.

John's first letter was written to Christians who were unsure of themselves. Their church members had fallen out with one another and some well-known teachers had left. Some of the church members were claiming that they had become the perfect children of God. They said they no longer had any problem with sin. Some believed that Jesus wasn't actually human and didn't really suffer on the cross. Some maintained that they were full of love for God—but showed no love at all for their brothers and sisters in the church! The writer tackled these issues and attitudes. He tells his readers how they can be sure that God the Father is their Father, and that Jesus is truly their Savior and Christ. It's not clear to whom the epistle was addressed. Like John's Gospel, this epistle came out of the Asiatic circle, with Ephesus as the center. The epistle was clearly sent to people familiar with John's message—possibly to the churches of the province of Asia (cf. the seven churches in Revelation). Tradition states that this book was written to the Roman province of Asia Minor, with Ephesus its major metropolitan area. The letter seems to have been sent to a specific group of churches in Asia Minor that were experiencing a problem with false teachers (like in Colossians and Ephesians)—specifically, (1) docetic Gnostics who denied the humanity of Christ but affirmed his deity, and (2) antinomian Gnostics who separated theology from ethics and morality. Augustine (fourth century) says it was written to the Parthians (Babylon). Cassiodrus (early sixth century) agrees. This probably came from the confusion of the phrases 'the elect lady' and 'she who is in Babylon,' which are used in 1 Peter 5:13 and 2 John 1. The Muratorian Fragment, an early canonical list of NT books written in Rome between 180 and 200 CE, asserts that this letter was written 'after the exhortation of his fellow disciples and bishops' (in Asia Minor).

John's epistles were probably written from Ephesus and circulated in the churches in Asia. They were immediately accepted by the whole church; we even have evidence of an exegesis of John's Gospel from as early as 150 CE. Like Peter and Jude, John counseled the church about dangers from within. He warned against antichrists who were trying to lead believers astray. Like the others, John identified the spirit of antichrist with the denial that 'Jesus Christ has come in the flesh' (1 John 4:2). The person of Jesus is the central doctrinal truth, and a relationship with him, who is God, is the irreplaceable essence of our Christian experience. He also reminds us that sin by any name is the devil's work: we are not to be moved by appeals to our passions. The epistle is not primarily a polemic but a letter for the edification of the readers in the truth and the life in Christ. And yet the errors of the Gnostics are constantly before John's mind. The leaders had gone out from among the true Christians, but there was an atmosphere of sympathy that constituted a subtle danger. In only two passages (2:18f.; 4:1–6) are the false teachers specifically denounced, but 'this unethical intellectualism' with its dash of Greek culture, along with mysticism and licentiousness, proved an attraction for many. Like Paul in Colossians, Ephesians, and the pastoral epistles, John foresaw this dire peril to Christianity. In the second century it gave true Christianity a gigantic struggle. 'The great Gnostics were the first Christian philosophers' and threatened to undermine the gospel message by 'deifying the devil' along with dethroning Christ. There were two kinds of Gnostics, both agreeing about the essential evil of matter. Both had trouble with the person of Christ. The Docetic Gnostics denied the actual humanity of Christ, while the Cerinthian Gnostics distinguished between the man Jesus and the Christ that came on him at his baptism and left him on the cross. Some practiced asceticism, and some indulged in licentiousness. They claimed superior knowledge and so were called Gnostics. John opposes both groups in his epistles. Some of the leaders he calls antichrists. There are stories about John's dread of Cerinthus and his unwillingness to be seen in the same public bath with him. The apostle of love showed himself a real 'son of thunder' when Gnosticism threatened the church.

The book of 1 John is classified in the genre of general epistle. There are eight general epistles. Like Paul's letters, they are arranged in the approximate order of their length, with the longest (Hebrews) first and the shortest (Jude) last. They are called the 'general' epistles because they appeal either to no specific audience or to an audience whose exact identity is somewhat broad or vague to us. Sometimes these eight epistles are called the 'catholic' epistles. Here the word 'catholic' simply means 'universal, general' (from the Greek kath'holon, meaning 'throughout'), and does not refer specifically to the Roman Catholic Church. The first and longest of John's three epistles doesn't have the usual characteristics of an ancient letter. It looks more like a small treatise or tract. The other two are constructed as letters and are very short. In fact, 2 John is the shortest book in the New Testament.

The book of 1 John is like a professional counseling session. John, the author, is the professional counselor, and the believers he directed the book toward are his clients. John, who was literally by Jesus's side, has listened to what has been going on with his fellow believers. After multiple 'therapy sessions,' in which John gathered information and heard everything taking place—the misinformation, the differences in ideology, the rise of Gnosticism—John is ready for a session in which he corrects, helps, encourages, and challenges his clients' beliefs that have been put to the test.

The book of 1 John is the first of three epistles attributed to John, one of Jesus's twelve disciples. When looking at 1 John, we see that this epistle was written to counteract a dangerous heresy that was threatening the fellowship of the Asian churches. It was apparently a form of Gnosticism. Gnosticism taught that the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, the demiurge, and that Christ was merely an emissary of the remote supreme divine being, esoteric knowledge (gnosis) of whom enabled the redemption of the human spirit. Among other things, these teachings taught that righteousness is not an imperative duty of the Christian life, and that Jesus is not God incarnate. Some of them appear to have denied the real humanity of Jesus. Others denied his deity. John wrote to the believers to correct this false teaching about Jesus, to reassure them of true doctrine, and to encourage them in their faith in Jesus Christ. False teachings about Jesus and the mixing of Christian with non-Christian beliefs is nothing new. It happened back when the church was just beginning, and this type of confusion still happens today. First John not only speaks to a situation the past, but it also helps us in the present. We too can confuse or mix Scripture with beliefs that aren't theologically sound, and we too need correction and reassurance. John's first epistle helps us reaffirm our beliefs in Jesus and our sound doctrine of who he is.