1 John 1 – Chapter Study
Of
the 4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John; John is unique and noticeably
different from the other three.
Matthew, Mark & Luke are called the “synoptic”
gospels because they give a synopsis, a more or less chronological history of
the earthly ministry of Christ.
In fact, both Matthew and Mark contain large sections
that are virtually identical in wording because they are both written records
of the reliable oral teaching that had been designed by the Apostles, Matthew
being one of them, and Peter being another, from whom Mark got his Gospel.
Luke also includes a large apart of this oral
tradition, but supplements it with his reports drawn from interviewing many
others who were eye-witnesses of Jesus.
But
when John set out to write his gospel – he wanted to fill in some of the gaps
that synoptic gospels had left out.
And whereas, Matthew, Mark & Luke had sought to
give more of a chronological record of the life and ministry of Jesus, John’s
aim was to focus more on the nature and character of Christ.
So he wove his narrative more around particular events
and moments in the life of Christ that revealed something about Him not readily
seen in the other gospels.
One
of the passages which John expands on is the whole scene at the last supper and
the words Jesus shared with the disciples as they sat around the table.
After telling them that He was going away, and
promising them He would come again to them in the person & presence of the
Holy Spirit, just prior to leaving the room for the trip to the Garden of
Gethsemane, Jesus prayed for them.
We
find that prayer in John 17 – please look at it with me
1Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to
heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son
also may glorify You, 2as You have given Him authority over all
flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3And
this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom You have sent.
We examined v. 3 just a short
while ago and saw that Jesus equates eternal life with the experiential knowledge of God.
Eternal
life, the life Adam was originally given
but forfeited through the Fall – the life that Jesus Christ reclaimed at the cross and now offers to
all those who will put their faith in Him, is to have an intimate relationship with God.
That
IS eternal life!
And John wrote his gospel
to the end that those who read it might believe in Jesus and find
that kind of life - John 20:30-31
30And truly Jesus did many other signs in the
presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; 31but
these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
1 John was written with this
same goal and theme – to describe
eternal life; to reveal what it looks like
and to help believers realize that the essence of eternal life is abiding
relationship and intimate fellowship with God through an active and vibrant
faith in Jesus Christ.
As we’ve been studying Paul’s
and Peter’s letters, we’ve gotten use to a certain form and style of writing
that is logical and flows from
principle to application.
We’re
in for a bit of a shock if we look for that same structure in 1 John.
You
see, John is not interested in laying down a reasoned theological treatise
here.
He
isn’t arguing a point as Peter and Paul do.
John’s approach is to simply
make an assertion with little to no attempt to prove it.
The
reason he doesn’t feel compelled to argue his point is because they aren’t his – they are what he
learned from Jesus and as far as John was concerned, that was good enough!
Growing up, when my parents
told me to do something, I would occasionally issue a minor challenge – “Why?”
Sometimes
my mother or father would tell me why.
But
other times, they would simply say – “Because I’m your mother!” Or, “Because I’m your father.”
What John writes about in
this letter are truths he had heard from Jesus, and John wasn’t about to
question them or ask “Why?”
He
trusted the Source – that Jesus said it,
it was enough; for John had come to realize the reality of what Jesus said when
He declared – “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!”
So don’t look for John to lay
out a logical argument here.
These
are true sayings because they come from the Lord.
Also, John doesn’t move
neatly from one subject to the next.
He
returns again and again to the same subjects.
It’s
almost like he is following the path of a downward spiral.
He’ll
talk about A, then go to B, and then C.
But
then he’ll revisit A, this time saying something deeper.
Then
he’s back to B, and again, taking it deeper.
He
goes on to C and does the same thing, then back to A
again.
I like the way Tenney describes this letter. He says -
“First John is symphonic
rather than logical in plan; it is constructed like a piece of music rather
than like a brief for a debate. Instead of proceeding step by step in unfolding
a subject, as Paul does in Romans, John selects a theme, maintains it
throughout the book, and introduces a series of variations, any one of which
may be a theme in itself.”
As a result, outlining 1 John
has proven to be a bear for those who’ve tried it.
But if you feel compelled to outline
the letter into neat categories, then you might divide it thus:
Chapters
1 & 2 speak of God as Light.
Chapters
3 & 4 speak of God as Love.
Chapter
5 represents God as Life.
But really, the central theme
that ties the whole thing together is relationship.
The
essence of what it means to be human as God created us to be, is to be in intimate relationship, first with Him,
and then with one another.
There is really no doubt
whatsoever that the Apostle John wrote this.[1]
Even
the most critical of NT scholars recognize and admit this.
The date of the writing is
less certain, though it is generally assumed that it was written in about 90 AD,
which means John is the last surviving apostle.
Reliable early church
tradition tells us that following John’s exile on the island prison of
1That 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, concerning the Word of life—2the life was manifested,
and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which
was with the Father and was manifested to us—3that which we have
seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us;
and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus
Christ. 4And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.
First off, you’ll note that
while we call this a letter, it lacks the form of a NT letter we’ve grown
accustomed to.
Paul
and Peter begin their letters with a From-To & Greetings section in the
first verses.
John
jumps right into his subject without
the customary opening lines of a letter.
In fact, the first verse
reminds us of the opening of his gospel, which reminds us of the opening of the
book of Genesis and the Scriptures themselves.
He
starts at the beginning – in this
case, the beginning of the revelation of God in the Person of Jesus Christ.
And
though John never names himself in this letter, as was his characteristic style
to remain un-named, he does say that he was an eyewitness of the things he
writes about.
Even
more, he heard and even handled the
Word of Life.
John loved to refer to Jesus
as the Word.
He opened his gospel with –
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.
Then in v. 14 he wrote -
14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth.
Here in 1 John, he says much
the same thing but in slightly different terms.
In light of John’s main theme
in 1 John of relationship, referring
to Jesus as the Word makes perfect sense.
Because
the medium of relationship is communication – this is how fellowship
grows and becomes more intimate.
Remember
what Jesus said the essence of eternal life was – to know God.
How
can we know God if He doesn’t reveal
Himself, and how can He reveal Himself if He doesn’t speak?
There are three avenues of
revelation God has given us of Himself.
1) the first and most general is Creation.
2)
The second is the scriptures - in which men spoke as they were moved by the
Holy Spirit.
3)
Third, and most clearly, as it says in Hebrews 1, God has spoken to us by His
own dear Son.
He is, as John says here in
v. 1, the Word of Life.
He
is the One who reveals and communicates life –
The
life of the Father, and the life that is eternal
because it is in communion with the
Father.
You and I could sit in each
other’s presence for many days and just stare at each other.
At
the end of that time, we’d know a lot about each other’s appearance, but we wouldn’t really know each other – because there
is far more to a person that just the outside.
In
fact, the outside, the appearance of
a person has very little to do with the inside; with who
and what they really are.
In
order for us to really get to know each other, we will need to spend quite a
bit of time communicating – not just talking, but communicating – seeking to
speak and listen with the aim of understanding and being understood.
Without
this kind of communication, there will be no genuine fellowship between us.
Jesus Christ came to restore
the broken relationship between God and man.
The
Cross removes the sin barrier and transfers us from death to life.
But
that is far from the end of the story.
Now,
as the children of God, He wants us to enjoy the benefit of that relationship
by entering into fellowship with Him.
This
is what we were created for – and fellowship requires communication.
Jesus
is the Word of Life – in Him we have God’s revelation to man.
The
degree to which we find and enjoy life
is directly proportional to how intimate our communication and communion with
God is.
This is why the Apostle Paul
says in Ephesians 5 that marriage is a picture of the relationship between
Christ and the Church.
In
terms of our relationship with God, we can make it even more intimate than
Father and children – for Paul calls the Church the Bride of Christ.
In Genesis 2, we see that the
goal of marriage is to be one flesh – that means intimacy; to know and be known
without any fear of shame or rejection.
A
husband and wife know that their intimacy and the enjoyment of their roles as
husband and wife is directly relate to how tight and intimately they
communicate.
Every
married person ought to make the subject of communication a field of the most
intense study.
As a
husband, I ought to seek to ever more clearly share with my wife what God is
showing me about myself and how He is changing me.
My
wife ought to do the same.
For
the degree to which we know and understand ourselves through the truth and
grace of God, and then openly share that with our mate in the commitment of
love and acceptance, the more rich and rewarding our
marriage will be.
Any barrier we erect to
communication, any hardening of our heart and closing of ourselves to our mate
is the degree to which we frustrate life and bring death to ourselves and our
mate.
This is all a picture of our
relationship with God!
And
John is concerned with sharing with his readers how they can enter into the full
benefits of what it means to be the children
of God.
It
comes through intimate fellowship
with the Lord, which is possible because Jesus has come as the Word of Life!
He
is the revelation of God!
John saw Him and heard Him
and even had the chance to touch Him.
We’re
reminded of the scene at the last supper when John leaned on Jesus.
This
is the kind of intimacy John wants to bequeath to all of us.
In v. 3, John links the
fellowship we have with God to having fellowship with one another.
3that which we have seen and heard we declare to
you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is
with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
Because
we have fellowship with the Father through the Son, we also, necessarily have
fellowship with one another because the Father and Son dwell in us!
John
is harkening back to Jesus’s words when He prayed in John 17:21
21that they all may be one, as You, Father, are
in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may
believe that You sent Me.
John is saying here that to
be in relationship with God through faith in Christ means to be in a new
relationship with other believers.
And
if we are in fellowship with God, then we will also be in fellowship with them!
Friend, we cannot separate
these two things – to be a NT Christian means to be a vital part of the Body of
Christ!
To
be committed to God means to be committed to His people.
To
be in fellowship with the Lord means we will be in fellowship with other
believers; even more, the level of our intimacy with God is reflected by the
level of intimacy we have with other believers-not all believers, but those with whom God has called us to be in touch
with.
I would ask you to consider
Jesus’ method of passing on the faith and so, re-infusing the human race with
the eternal life Adam lost in the Garden.
He
taught the multitudes, but He selected 12 men into whom He poured His life and
heart.
And
then even from those 12, He singled out 3; Peter, James, and John, with whom He
was most intimate.
It
was not possible for Jesus in His earthly ministry to have the kind of
relational intimacy that was necessary to change lives. He had to limit His focus and scope to a
smaller group to do this.
So
He taught the crowds, but He discipled and poured his life into just a handful,
and then even from the handful focused his efforts on those who would be the
core.
You and I come to church here
and meet in mass for worship and the study of God’s Word.
As
we do, there’s a certain level of surface fellowship that takes place, but not
the kind that makes disciples and sees real life infused into us.
It’s
only as we meet in smaller groups and pour into each other that that takes
place.
Some
people do it right here after study – and that’s great.
Others
are more purposeful and gather in small groups throughout the week and month to
develop their relationship with God by deepening their fellowship with one
another.
You
home group leaders – those groups are not platforms for you to show off your
teaching skills.
They
are times of fellowship and mutual ministry in which our fellowship with God
individually is turned to be a blessing to one another.
You
ought to be leading your group to this end.
Note what John says in v. 4 -
4And these things we write to you that your joy
may be full.
Remember when Jesus said, “I have come that
you may have life, and that you may have it MORE abundantly”?
John
is echoing that here!
The life Jesus gives is
marked by an unshakeable joy!
I know that we’ve covered
this ground many times before but let me go over it again for those who are new
to the faith.
There’s
a vast difference between joy and happiness.
Happiness
is dependent on what happens.
When
things are going well, I’m happy; when they aren’t, I’m sad.
Joy is
based, not on what happens, but what happened in the death and resurrection of
Jesus.
Joy
is based on a PERSON, the person of
Christ.
It’s
the settled confidence of knowing
that no matter what happens day to day, when all is said and done, we will be
with God in eternal glory and bliss.
Let me use an example of the
difference between happiness and joy.
Let’s
say you’re watching a movie you’ve already seen, so you know the ending.
And
in the end, the hero wins and is vindicated; everything turns out great in the
end.
But
along the way he or she suffers many setbacks and apparent losses.
As
you watch the movie, you still feel the sense of loss and pain the hero is
going through – but it’s all tempered by the awareness that in the end, it all
turns out okay.
We are living a grand story,
and it happens that we suffer setbacks and losses from day to day, but the end
of our story is certain – we get heaven; we gain glory!
It
is this confidence that allows us to endure – even more, that inspires us to
trust that the setbacks and sorrows we endure now are actually sharpening our
longing for the joy that is set before us!
John says here that he wrote
so his readers, and that means you and I, might enter in to all that for which
Jesus came.
So let me ask you – is your
life FILLED with JOY?
In
light of what he’s said in the previous verses we realize that joy is the result of fellowship with God an one another.
We
don’t aim our lives at joy – we aim them at God, and find joy throw in.
Many people live their whole
lives aimed at being happy.
All
their decisions are calculated with the bottom line being more happiness.
They
will lie to avoid sorrow, cheat to increase happiness and steal to obtain the
happiness they think belongs to someone else.
But
happiness is not a worthy object of our lives.
It
was never meant to be the goal, so the more people aim at it, the more elusive
it becomes.
We were created for God, and
our souls are restless until they find their rest in Him.
Joy
comes as the overflow of a life in fellowship with God and His
own.
5This is the message which we have heard from Him
and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 6If
we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness,
we lie and do not practice the truth.
Here’s a classic example of
how John doesn’t argue a point from logic or attempt a debate-form in his
letter.
He
simply makes an assertion, based on what he’s learned from Jesus.
What he learned and is
passing on to us is that God is light; meaning He is righteous, holy and pure.
In
Him there is no darkness, no evil, no moral short-coming; He’s perfect in all
His ways and being.
Therefore,
if God is light, then those who are
in fellowship with Him will not be in
the darkness.
If
they are in darkness, if their lifestyle is marked by evil and unholiness, then it’s proof they aren’t in fellowship with God.
That phrase, “walk
in darkness” in v. 6 means to order one’s lifestyle after that which is
contrary to the nature of God.
The
word “walk” was a common NT idiom meaning lifestyle;
one’s whole pattern of habitual behavior.
John
is not saying here that Christians
don’t sin.
He’s
saying they don’t habitually sin the
same sins over and over again.
They
don’t pattern their lives by the world’s standards and live in immorality.
They
may not be perfect, but they are at least living in the light and striving toward perfection.
He
will have a lot more to say about this in chapter 2.
7But if we walk in the light as He is in the
light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanses us from all sin.
We might expect John to say,
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with Him,
for He is in the light,” but that’s not the way he puts it.
In
John’s mind, fellowship with God and fellowship with one another are so closely
linked you can’t have one without the other; so he condenses the whole thing.
If our relationship with the
Lord is healthy and we’re walking in tight fellowship with Him, then we will
also have tight fellowship with one another.
And
the glue that holds it all together is the blood of Christ which pays our
sin-debt and purges us of its stain.
One quick word here before we
move on – when you see the phrase “the blood of Christ” or “Jesus” in the
Bible, understand that the NT writers did not mean the literal red liquid that flowed in Jesus veins, as
though it had some kind of magical
properties.
The blood of Christ simply referred to the
shedding of His blood in death.
The
phrase, “the blood of Christ” is idiomatic or representative of His death.
It’s
the death of Christ, which came about
through the shedding of His blood, that provides our
atonement.
Now, what sin does the blood of Christ cleans us from? Look at it –
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have
fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us
from all sin.
And
the verb “cleanses” is in the present indicative
tense, meaning it’s absolutely certain and we don’t have to wait till some
future date when we’re doing better or when we might be able to be forgiven.
Walking
in fellowship with God and one another means that we dwell in the place where
we are being constantly cleansed of our
sin.
But
wait a minute, John has just said that if we walk in
the darkness, we aren’t in fellowship with God.
He
gives us kind of a paradox here – one
that seems hard to grasp conceptually,
but one that every child of God who is walking in fellowship with Him
understand intuitively!
For the closer we get to the
Lord, the more aware of our sin and moral failure we become.
But
instead of running from God and rationalizing our sin, we run to Him, trusting in His mercy and grace
as sufficient to purge us and make us more like Himself.
The
person who’s walking in darkness is barely aware of their sin.
Their
conscience is so seared, so numb to the conviction of the Holy Spirit, they’ve
lost interest in maintaining communion with God.
It’s
of that kind of person John goes on to speak -
8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
This is an important point.
The
person who is unaware of personal sin and is untroubled by the way he/she falls
short of God’s holiness, is on dangerous ground.
Those
who are in genuine fellowship with God are intimately aware of their own
failure and weakness.
This
is one of the reasons why they stay so close to God, because they know if they
stray from Him, they’re history!
Every so often you meet
people who give you the impression they think they’re perfect.
I’ve
noticed that some of these are people who’ve backslidden terribly and when you
go to them in an attempt to confront and restore them, they get all huffy and
say they haven’t done anything wrong!
They
may be living in gross sin, but when you try to reason with them, they have become
so blind, they defend themselves and act as if they don’t know what you’re
talking about.
The
problem is that they are so far from God, they’re
judging themselves by the standard of their own desires rather than the
holiness of God.
Those who are farthest from
God are least aware of their sin
while those who are closest to Him, paradoxically, are most aware of how they come short.
But
their vision is so filled with the glory and wonder of the Lord,
they are no longer preoccupied with themselves or their failure.
They’re
convinced of the mercy and grace of God covering their sin and purging them of it’s influence.
9If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
We covered v. 9 in great depth
on Sunday so I won’t deal with it tonight.
10If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him
a liar, and His word is not in us.
Here’s an example of how John
returns to something he’s already said but adds more too it.
In
v. 8 he said much the same thing, but adds that the person who denies his/her sin
is in effect saying God is a liar.
There
is no ambiguity about the fact that God has said all people are sinners.
Some
may want to deny they are, but that doesn’t alter the fact.
All
it does is make them guilty of libel against God, and so add to their sin.
Some years ago there was a
movement called the Holiness movement.
It’s
premise was that it was possible to live a life of sinless perfection.
The reasoning went like this:
Can
you manage to stop sinning for 1
minute?
If you can, why not 2 minutes? After all,
that’s just 1 minute followed by another!
And
if you can go without sinning for 2 minutes, why couldn’t you go for 10
minutes, an hour, a day, month, year?
Not a few men and women
claimed they had achieved a state of such sinless perfection.
The story is told that at a
dinner reception attended by Charles Spurgeon, he was told that one of the men
at the main table was one of those who had achieved a state of sinless
perfection; at least so he claimed.
Spurgeon,
who was quite a prankster, found this absurd and decided to test the man’s
moral resolve.
So
he took a pitcher of water from one of the servers and emptied it into the lap
of the man who jumped up cursing obscenities.
Spurgeon’s
remark was something to the effect of, “Sad how quickly so much moral
perfection should be so quickly abandoned over so small an offense.”
No friends, none of us is
without sin.
And
the tighter our fellowship with God, the more conscious of our sin we will be.
But
as we walk with the Lord in close communion, we have the confidence of knowing
that as we admit our failings, His mercy covers
us and His grace cleanses us.
[1] Our records of early church
history show that the first epistle of John was readily received and recognized
as John’s writing. Polycarp, the disciple of John (Epistle
to the Philippians, chap. 7), quotes 4:3. Eusebius (Ecclesiastical
History, 3.39) says of Papias, a disciple of John
and a friend of Polycarp: “He used testimonies from the First Epistle of John.”
Irenaeus, according to Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, 5.8), often
quoted this epistle. So in his work (Against Heresies, 3.15.5, 8)
Irenaeus quotes from John by name (2:18, etc.); and in 3.16.7, he quotes 4:1-3,
5:1, and 2 John 7, 8. Clement of
The
similarities between John’s Gospel and John’s epistles are so remarkable that
no one could doubt that all four of these writings were done by the same
person. The syntax, vocabulary, and the thematic developments are so strikingly
similar that even the inexperienced reader can tell that John’s epistles were
penned by the writer of the Gospel of John. One reason for this similarity in
style is that John probably wrote the epistles shortly after he compiled his
Gospel. (The New Commentary)
[2]
The Epistles of John,
with Revelation, are the latest of the NT writings. All were written late in
the life of the beloved apostle, who survived his companions by some three
decades. Irenaeus (c. A.D. 130-200) wrote that “all the presbyters, who
associated in