Authorship
From a very early period, church fathers identified the apostle John as the author of this letter. Although the matter became more debated in the twentieth century, internal evidence supports this position. The style of this letter closely resembles that of John’s Gospel, especially when we allow for differences of genre, subject and possibly a more specific audience for the letter. Individual ancient writers often varied their style far more than the differences between John’s Gospel and 1 John. Disciples sometimes imitated their teachers’ teachings, but imitating vocabulary and style was far less common. One normally imitated even vocabulary only if one was pretending to be the teacher. In such cases of pretense, however, the writer expressly claims (falsely) to be the teacher. By contrast, no such claim is offered here, since the original audience knew the author’s identity.
Genre
Because most of 1 John (except for 2:12–14) reads more like a homily than a letter, it might be classified (in later epistolary terms) as a letter-essay.
Background
The letter’s situation is somewhat hard to reconstruct. Allusions to material in John’s Gospel suggests that hearers of 1 John had also heard the Gospel, or at least the author’s teachings provided in that Gospel. Because the audience of John’s Gospel may include Jewish believers expelled from their synagogues, it is possible that 1 John at least partly addresses churches where some members have returned to the synagogue by denying Jesus’ Messiahship (cf. 2:19,22; 4:2–3). This was only one of the problems John addressed in the churches of Asia Minor, however; it was relevant in Smyrna and Philadelphia (Rev. 2:9–10; 3:7–9), but in some locations the primary issue was compromise with idolatry advocated by false prophets (perhaps relevant in 1 John 4:1; 5:21; cf. Rev. 2:14–15,20–23). One of the challenging forms of idolatry was the imperial cult (cf. Rev. 13:14–15). Another problem in some churches was that the church needed more love, possibly including love for one another (Rev. 2:4). Certainly false apostles and teaching (Rev. 2:2,6,14–15,20) abounded. Any of these issues, or combinations of these issues, could lie partly in the background.
One often-proposed background for 1 John is the challenge of early Gnosticism. One group, Docetists, believed that Christ was divine but only seemed to become human (cf. 4:2). Another group, followers of one Cerinthus, believed that the Christ-Spirit merely came on Jesus, but they denied that He was actually the one and only Christ (cf. 2:22). Some Gnostics believed that they were incapable of committing real sins, although their bodies could engage in behavior that non-Gnostic Christians considered sinful. Such Gnostic systems are not really attested until decades after 1 John, but it is possible that some thinkers were already moving in these directions.
Whatever the specific background we reconstruct, one point is beyond dispute: the primary troublemakers are clearly “secessionists,” people who had been part of the Christian community John addresses but who had rejected the teaching of that community. John advocates testing the spirits by two main criteria: a moral-ethical test (keeping the commandments, especially love of the Christian community) and a faith test (the right view about Jesus). ◆
Quick Glance
Author:
The apostle John
Audience:
Believers in western Asia Minor
Date:
Between AD 85 and 95
Theme:
John writes to assure believers of the certainty of their faith and to refute heretical doctrines teaching that Jesus was not fully human and fully divine.