Introduction
Overview
John writes to encourage the faithful by reminding them of what true Christians believe and how they should behave. There are two purpose statements in 1 John: (1) to warn believers about the false teaching (2:26), and (2) to help believers know they have eternal life (5:13). John repeatedly emphasizes the marks of a true believer and how these counter the false teaching.
Date, Authorship, and Audience
The three epistles of John appear to have been written in the last decade and a half of the first century AD (85–95), likely from Ephesus. They fit within the larger set of Johannine writings (“Johannine” means “pertaining to John”), which includes the Gospel of John and Revelation. The three epistles of John are uneven in length, and they also differ in terms of their audiences. First John, which is four times as long as the other two combined, is written as a circular to several churches in Asia Minor.
The author of these epistles does not give his name directly in the text (unlike Revelation), but the author of 2 and 3 John calls himself “the elder.” Given the fact that 1 John is especially close to 2 John in style and content, and that 2 and 3 John were associated together traditionally, the author of all three Johannine Epistles may be John the elder. Interestingly, Irenaeus mentions the graves of two Christian leaders in Ephesus as those of John the elder and John the apostle. Some confusion of the two is apparent, in that both may have been disciples of the Lord and both may have been called an “elder.” Papias claims not to have known any of the Twelve but does claim to be a disciple of John the elder. Irenaeus claims to have been a disciple of Polycarp, who in turn claims to have sat at the feet of John the apostle. Least speculative is the likelihood that there were several Christian leaders in the community of Ephesus between 70 and 100, of whom John the elder, the author of the epistles, is one.
While historical-critical scholars have argued that the first clear connecting of John the apostle with the Gospel bearing his name is Irenaeus (around 180), this is not the case. There is no second-century opinion as to who might be associated with the Johannine Gospel and Epistles other than the apostle and the elder, and one can understand their being referred to by their appellations (“the disciple Jesus loved” and “the elder”) if indeed they had the same first name and were ministering within the same general context. An overlooked clue to John’s authorship, though, may be found in Ac 4:19–20, where Luke attributes a Petrine saying to Peter (we must obey God rather than man; Ac 4:19; 5:29; 11:17) and a typically Johannine saying to John (we cannot help testifying to what we have seen and heard; Jn 3:32; Ac 4:20; 1 Jn 1:3). It may have been wrong or misguided, but Luke connects the apostle John with a Johannine saying a full century before Irenaeus.
Historical Context
The association with martyrdom in 1 Jn 3:16 seems to refer to the persecution of Christians under the emperor Domitian (81–96). Standard practices in the Roman Empire would have required residents to participate in religious-cultural festivals, which sometimes involved offerings to the gods, the eating of foods offered to idols, and engaging in cultic prostitution (Rv 2:12–29). Especially under the reign of Domitian, when subjects of the empire were expected to at least offer incense to “the divine emperor” or to confess Caesar as Lord and God (note the direct challenge in Jn 20:28), the refusal to participate may have borne negative consequences. Construction for Domitian’s temple to himself in Ephesus began in AD 82 and was finished about seven years later. At the entrance of the temple stood a large statue of Domitian with a raised, clenched fist, and the altar of his temple bore carvings of subjugated peoples being humbled at the hand of the Romans.
The Roman Empire generally accommodated veneration of the gods and simply added “the divine emperor” to the local pantheon. This allowed regional pride and religious identity to flourish while at the same time garnering respect and deference to the occupying Roman presence. Most Gentile residents of Asia Minor would not have been bothered by such expectations; they were happy to see worshiping the emperor as no more a problem than saluting a flag or pledging allegiance to one’s homeland. Jewish Christians, however, called for a higher commitment. In the worship of one God and his Son Jesus Christ, to live under his lordship means to displace all others.
It was especially a problem for a metropolis such as Ephesus if non-Jewish civic leaders began forgoing cultural festivals in honor of the emperor and pagan gods as a result of their newfound Christian faith. Not only would Christian leaders be put on trial, but also common Christians would have been pressured to participate in cultural festivities as marks of support for the empire. If residents and civic leaders diminished their participation in holiday events—especially on the emperor’s birthday and during imperial visits—this posed a civic problem. Ephesus might lose Roman financial support for building projects and for being an official “keeper of the temple”—a highly sought-after status. Ephesus had received this award twice and was in stiff competition with Pergamum for many decades in vying for Roman favor in exchange for imperial honor. Therefore, pressure was social as well as political.
Two decades later, Pliny, the governor of nearby Bithynia, wrote to the emperor Trajan asking if he should continue to kill Christians who refused to deny Christ or to worship Trajan’s image. Pliny had just put to death two young Christian women who, despite being warned three times, had refused to do either. In reply, the emperor advises him not to seek out Christians to persecute them, but if they are duly warned and refuse to worship Caesar, they must of course be put to death, implying a standing policy (Pliny the Younger, Letter 10.96–97).
Domitian, emperor of Rome from AD 81 to 96, required emperor worship. Ephesus was the site of a large temple dedicated to Domitian. This emperor worship was one of the crises faced by the Johannine community.
© Baker Publishing Group and Dr. James C. Martin. Courtesy of the Ephesus Museum, Turkey.
Pliny mentions those who have been accused of being Christians but were found to be “innocent” of the name. All they were guilty of was meeting together before the dawn, eating some common food, and singing a hymn to Christ “as though he were a god.” Pliny declares that any such person, of course, could not be found “guilty” of being a Christian. If that is how the pagan governor saw it, how might fellow Christians have felt if someone who had denied them and their Lord in order to escape Roman persecution showed up for worship and expected to continue in fellowship with other believers? This may have been the sin mentioned in the early part of the epistle (1:8), which Gentile Christians were saying was not a sin (1:8), therefore claiming to be without sin for participating in Roman civic life.
Occasion and Content
The main concern of the Johannine Epistles is church unity. Here the exhortation to “love one another” is advanced repeatedly, as the original commandment of Jesus (Jn 13:34–35) finds its application as the key to Christian unity in the late-first-century church (1 Jn 3:10–23; 4:7–12, 16–21; 5:2–3; 2 Jn 5–6). The need for unity is apparent in the many crises addressed by the epistles: questions of ethics, defections, temptations from the world, tensions within the community, false teachers, struggles over authority, and a brief mention of idolatry.
A common approach to identifying the adversaries in the Johannine Epistles is to see them as gnostics; after all, the antichrists in 1 Jn 4:1–3 and 2 Jn 7 refuse to believe that Jesus came in the flesh—the docetist heresy. While all gnostics were docetists, not all docetists were gnostics. Further, the antichrists of 1 Jn 2:18–25 are secessionists, who have recently left the church, denying Jesus’s messiahship in clinging to the Father, so there may have been more than one antichristic threat. (See the article “The Identity of the Antichrist.”) Therefore, a less speculative approach is to acknowledge more than one set of likely adversaries within the Johannine situation rather than to lade the early gnostic Cerinthus and his kin with multiple imagined heretical fallacies.
Several crises appear to have confronted members of the Johannine situation between 70 and 100. These include (1) disputes over separating themselves from the customs of “the world” within a largely Gentile (pagan) setting; (2) tensions with local Jewish family and friends over the law of Moses and how Jesus represents the will of the Father as the Messiah/Christ; (3) tensions with pagan worship—especially emperor worship, which had increased in its expectations and celebrations under the reign of Domitian (AD 81–96); (4) Gentile Christians’ teaching a doctrine of assimilation within pagan religious settings; (5) struggles with institutionalizing tendencies in the early church, designed to defend against docetist influences by appealing to a centralized form of hierarchical leadership. It is incorrect to think that only one crisis lay behind the struggles addressed within the Johannine situation over three decades.
The question of those claiming to “have no sin” (1:8) is an intriguing one in 1 John. On the one hand, it might appear that we have an alien gnostic group claiming perfectionism as a factor of direct access to God without need of the atonement. This view has several problems to it, however. (1) The elder also speaks of the impossibility of sinning for anyone who is born of God (1 Jn 3:9), so this may be a simple extension of the elder’s own teaching. (2) They may have simply been Gentile believers with a Hellenistic worldview. (3) Having “no sin” may be a reference to something in particular not being wrong, not a reference to sinlessness proper. (4) The emphasis on the atoning work of Christ (2:2) is asserted in order to get people to abandon the sin that he came to remove (3:1–10) and to love one another. Therefore, those claiming to have “no sin” in John’s audience are challenged with the commandment of the Lord to love one another (Jn 13:34–45).
This being the case, the elder’s struggle was not against gnostic perfectionists, who claimed to have “arrived” spiritually and thus to be beyond reproach. Rather, community members of Jewish background were tempted to rejoin the synagogue, with its familiar traditions and religious certainty, excusing their abandonment of John’s community and their Lord by diminishing his place as the Messiah and the Son of God. Conversely, community members of Gentile backgrounds were tempted to “love the world” (2:15) in assimilative ways: joining in with civic celebrations, emperor worship, and pagan moral practices, and excusing such compromises by teaching a nonsuffering Jesus who did not come in the flesh. The elder challenges both of these tendencies as the denial of community values going back to the teachings of Jesus himself—the command to love one another and not to abandon the community of faith or its values. Thus the teachings of Jesus in the Johannine Gospel find their timely application in the first Johannine Epistle, which was circulated and read in meetings for worship among the churches of Asia Minor. The members’ love for one another is a direct measure of their love for God.
Modern Application
In the light of these issues, the ethical concerns of the elder come to the fore and present themselves for consideration in every generation. They include such issues as (1) debates over sin and what it means to be without sin; (2) living in the world but not of the world; (3) who the antichrists were and how their first-century threats relate to other adversaries in later generations; (4) the call to love one another as a means of providing a way to Christian unity; (5) warnings against idolatry; (6) exhortations to extend hospitality to other believers; and (7) warnings against leadership styles resorting to intimidation and self-assertion rather than the liberating command of truth. In these and other ways, the Johannine Epistles continue to be relevant to readers in every generation, especially as their content communicates from one context to another.
Outline
1. The Prologue—from Witness to Fellowship (1:1–4)
2. The Question of Sin and the Commandment to Love (1:5–2:17)
A. Those Claiming Not to Be Sinning (1:5–2:2)
B. The Old Commandment of the Lord: Love Your Brothers and Sisters! (2:3–11)
C. Love Not the World! (2:12–17)
3. The Antichrist Has Come! The Secessionists Deny Jesus’s Messiahship (2:18–29)
A. The Departure of the Antichrists Shows Their Inauthenticity (2:18–20)
B. Those Who Deny Jesus as the Christ Lose the Father (2:21–25)
C. Abide in Christ and His Anointing (2:26–29)
4. To Abide in Christ Is to Attain Victory over Sin (3:1–24)
A. Christ Removes Our Sins . . . and Our Sinning (3:1–6)
B. Those Who Sin, Not Loving Brothers and Sisters, Are Not from God (3:7–10)
C. The Party of Cain—the Brother Killers—Includes the Indifferent (3:11–17)
D. On Loving in Truth and in Deed (3:18–24)
5. The Antichrists Are Coming! They Deny Jesus Came in the Flesh (4:1–6)
A. Those Who Deny Jesus’s Humanity Are False Prophets and Antichrists (4:1–3)
B. Greater Is He That Is in You Than He That Is in the World (4:4–6)
6. Let Us Love One Another! (4:7–21)
A. We Love because God Has First Loved Us (4:7–10)
B. The Perfecting of Love in Us (4:11–17)
C. To Love God Is to Love Brothers and Sisters (4:18–21)
7. The Victory That Overcomes the World (5:1–21)
A. Belief in Jesus as the Christ Is Victory (5:1–3)
B. The Life-Producing Testimony (5:4–12)
C. The Boldness of Faith (5:13–15)
D. Keep from Mortal Sins—in Particular, Idols! (5:16–21)