The three books of the NT that have come to us as 1, 2, and 3 John are so similar to each other that much that can be said of any one of them can be said about all three. Thus, this introduction will address those features of these books that are common to all three. The commentary on each of the three also is prefaced by a brief introduction that addresses issues specific to each letter.
Before turning to historical matters, the question of why bother studying these books should be considered. Their presence in the NT, of course, demands the attention of those who believe the Bible to be God’s Word. But what is the significance of these three brief letters toward the back of our Bibles?
Do you want to know God? Is the truth about God important to you? Knowing God truly is the overarching theme of both John’s gospel and letters. In a world that was already filled with conflicting religions and philosophies, a world in that respect similar to our own, Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3, italics added). Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God, for it is only through responding to God’s self-revelation to humankind that any of us can come to know him and enjoy life with him both now and throughout eternity. That’s a pretty significant issue for every person in any place in history.
Furthermore, Jesus claims that there is only one true God, the God who sent Jesus Christ into the world. There are many different, and often conflicting, views of God in various cultures today. We live in spiritually confusing times, especially as every culture becomes more religiously diverse. Many believe that it doesn’t matter what you believe about a higher power as long as you believe it sincerely. But can any and all religions be true—everything from Eastern ideas about reincarnation to “new age” spirituality to beliefs taught in the sacred synagogues, mosques, and temples across North America and around the world? John wrote these three brief letters in a spiritually confusing time when there were conflicting theologies about Jesus Christ in order to assure his readers of their eternal life after death because they truly knew God in Christ. What could be more significant than that?
Church tradition from the earliest days of Christianity has ascribed these letters to John, commonly believed to be the apostle John—one of Jesus’ chosen twelve, the son of Zebedee, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” of John’s gospel. But note that neither the text of the gospel nor that of the letters bears John’s name, or any name. Second and Third John are from the pen of “the elder,” who is not further identified. The letters and gospel are anonymous to us, but the Christians who originally received them undoubtedly knew the identity of the author, and it is likely on the ancient testimony of those believers that the letters have been ascribed to John.
But John (Gk. Ἰωάννης) was a common name at the time, and early in Christian history some came to doubt if “the elder” was the same man as the author of 1 John and John’s gospel. Modern scholarship has complicated the issue even further with most NT scholars rejecting the identity of the beloved disciple as the apostle John and conjecturing as many as five different author/redactors for the gospel and letters.
The earliest ascription of authorship to John comes from Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (d. AD 156), and from Papias, a contemporary of Polycarp, whose writings survive only as quotations in the later writings of Irenaeus and Eusebius. Both Polycarp and Papias lived in the greater vicinity of Ephesus in western Asia Minor, the location to which the apostle John is said to have fled at about the time when the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem (AD 70), taking Mary the mother of Jesus with him. There he presumably lived for the rest of his long life, on into the reign of Trajan, the Roman emperor who ruled the empire from AD 98 to 117. Irenaeus (AD 175–195), bishop of Lyon, was born in Asia Minor and as a child personally knew Polycarp, who is said to have been appointed bishop of Smyrna by eyewitnesses of the Lord Jesus. Irenaeus says that John, the disciple of the Lord who was with Jesus in the upper room, wrote the gospel while living in Ephesus (Haer. 3.1.2). Even though such sources are subject to the same historical scrutiny as other ancient documents, this is a remarkable chain of historical witnesses enjoyed by no other NT book.
The witness of Papias is more complicated and has been the subject of more debate, for his writings are preserved only in those of Eusebius, whose interpretation of Papias’s words raised the possibility of two men named John, one authoring the gospel and another, the elder John, the letters and the book of Revelation (Hist. eccl. 3.39.3–17). Papias mentions John twice, once as a “disciple of the Lord” and again as an “elder.” But Eusebius overlooked the fact that even when Papias refers to Peter and James, he doesn’t at first call them “apostles” but “elders,” suggesting that the two titles were not mutually exclusive in Papias.1 But ever since the fourth century when Eusebius wrote, there has been debate in the church about the authorship of the three letters attributed in the NT to “John” and about who is buried in “John’s tomb” in Ephesus.
Although the issue of authorship will not likely ever be known with certainty, the author of these letters clearly claims to be a bearer of the apostolic teaching about Jesus that was based on eyewitness testimony about his public ministry, death, and resurrection. The relationship between the three letters and between them and the gospel (see discussions below) indicates that the same author likely wrote all three letters, and he was also either the author of the gospel or a close associate. These letters insist that this apostolic testimony trumps any reinterpretation of Jesus by those who were not commissioned by him and who were far removed from personal knowledge of him.
As with every letter in the NT, we must infer the historical setting of John’s letters and the reason they were written from the contents of the letters themselves, an innately subjective interpretive task that we undertake with little other information. It is difficult to read any text without making some assumptions about the situation for which it was written, when and where the author lived, and how to relate references in the text to the “real world.” But just as a color sample placed against one background can appear as if it changes color when placed against a different background, the assumptions readers bring to what they read can make a big difference in how they understand the meaning of the text. Thus, it is important to continually check our assumptions about the historical background of the biblical books. It is clear that some disagreement has disrupted the churches under the author’s purview and spiritual authority, and that he is concerned to reassure his congregations of their salvation as they adhere to the teachings and beliefs about Jesus that the author represents.
The major themes of right belief about Jesus, a right attitude toward sin, and interpersonal relationships characterized by love are clear, but why the author has chosen to discuss these particular topics is not. He reinforces his authority as a bearer of the apostolic teaching about the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, which implies that the source of truth about God in Christ was in some dispute. But the author writes with the intent of a pastor to care for his people rather than as an apologist to argue directly against those who have left the Johannine church(es). As Brooke wrote, “It is probably true that the writer never loses sight altogether of the views of his opponents in any part of the Epistle. But it is important to emphasize the fact that, in spite of this, the real aim of the Epistle is not exclusively, or even primarily, polemical.”2
Nevertheless, scholarship throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries spent much time and ink on reconstructing the more specific nature of the false teaching with the assumption that it had an antinomian impulse motivated by (proto-)gnostic tendencies.3 The gnostic assumption was developed in the twentieth century by Rudolf Bultmann,4 after which time the three letters were routinely read against the specific christological error of Docetism, which derived from the application of gnostic thought to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and against licentious living, which was one conclusion of gnostic thought applied to Christian living. Read through this lens, the verbs of sense in the prologue of 1 John were taken to drive home the physicality of Jesus as a real human being, as also was his coming in flesh (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7).
The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have brought another perspective that has been gaining ground, that these letters should not be read as a direct polemic against Docetism or its specific Ephesian expression, Cerinthianism.5 Tradition teaches that Cerinthus was a contemporary of John in Ephesus and taught that the divine nature descended upon the ordinary man Jesus at his baptism and departed from him in Gethsemane, a view referred to as adoptionism by modern theologians. (See commentary 1 John 2:19.) Offering several factors that argue against a presumed gnostic background, Lieu writes, “Granted that this framework of interpretation has the compelling advantage of allowing, at least superficially, a consistent exegesis of the whole letter, the question must be asked how far it is valid and true to the thought and function of 1 John.”6
This recent nonpolemical view is a needed corrective to Johannine scholarship that has depended so heavily on identifying what the secessionists believed and why they left (1 John 2:19), and to refocus the discussion in terms that sit better with the author’s own statements about why he wrote. His concern was to shepherd those in his spiritual care to remain within the bounds of orthodoxy rather than to directly address the heresy(-ies) that disrupted the church(es); that makes it difficult to reconstruct with specificity the problems being addressed. It does free interpreters to focus their attention on how John defines orthodoxy, which in fact implicitly argues against not only Cerinthianism, Docetism, and Gnosticism more broadly, but many heresies through the centuries and in our own time.
Nevertheless, it is clear from John’s letters that he was arguing against some serious misunderstanding and distortion of the gospel. Given the likely setting in Ephesus and the likely date of the letters, the influence of Greek philosophical assumptions, perhaps combined with a misunderstanding of the promises of John’s gospel, had produced beliefs that were, perhaps unwittingly, opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e., they were “anti-Christ” beliefs).
It remains true that although 1 John’s primary purpose was not polemical, the schism within the community was the immediate occasion of the letter, and the origins of that schism are to be seen in those elements in the thought of the community of 1 John that necessitated both the christological and the moral debate. It is when we trace the roots of these elements to the Fourth Gospel that we can understand better the problem and the achievement of I John.7
The similarities between John’s letters and the Fourth Gospel indicate some relationship between them.
If these similarities did not originate with the same author, then the two authors stand closely in the same tradition about Jesus and probably personally knew one another. Despite some differences that can probably be accounted for by their different genres, the letters of John and the gospel of John are closer in language, style, dualistic worldview, and theology than they are to any other NT books. Painter observes that the similarities between the gospel and letters are closer than between other books of the NT known to have the same author, such as Luke and Acts or 1 and 2 Thessalonians.8
The obvious similarities raise the methodological question of whether we should allow, and deliberately use, the Fourth Gospel to influence our exegesis of these letters. For instance, should the referent or sense of a particular term in the letters be defined by the occurrence of the same term in the gospel? While the overall similarities compel us in that direction, the different purposes for which the gospel and letters were written may caution against too quickly equating the sense of the two. In fact, some interpreters suggest that it was a misunderstanding and misuse of John’s gospel that gave rise to the false teaching in the Johannine church(es), and that the letters use the same terms as the gospel but with the intent of correcting heresy. This, of course, assumes that the gospel was written and circulated first, that problems developed in its interpretation and use, and that the letters followed.
Thatcher presents another option, that although the letters and gospel arose from the same historical moment and tradition, the controversy developed before the Fourth Gospel was written while the Johannine teaching about Jesus was still in oral form.9 Thatcher proposes that the letters were written to quell the controversy in the absence of an authoritative, written narrative of Jesus’ life. In Thatcher’s view the controversy called John’s gospel into existence. Although this theory is interesting and creative, it seems that the letters correlate so well to the gospel in its written form that the oral tradition would have had to be essentially identical to John’s gospel.
A similar question can be raised about the sequence and relationship between the three letters themselves. The themes, style, and vocabulary are so similar between 1 and 2 John that it is hard to imagine they didn’t come from the same hand. And the similarities between 2 John and 3 John—both being from “the elder,” whose main concern was when to extend Christian hospitality (3 John) and when not to (2 John)—join them as two sides of the same coin. (See Introduction to 2 and 3 John.) This observation has led commentators to propose a number of theories about the sequence in which these letters were written.
Strecker thinks 1 John originated independently of and later than 2 and 3 John, a view held also by Marshall, who structures his commentary by addressing the books in that order.10 Johnson proposes that all three were written by the same person at the same time and delivered as a package.11 By that theory, Demetrius carried a letter of introduction to Gaius (3 John), along with a letter to be read in Gaius’s church (2 John) as an introduction to the sermon to be delivered (1 John). Painter believes all three were written by the elder, and probably in the order in which they appear in the NT, a view shared by this writer.12 I propose the scenario that 1 John was written and preached in the elder’s home church soon after the schism. But because the secessionists had gone out, taking their false teaching with them potentially to other churches in the area, John sends 1 John to other churches with a cover letter (2 John) to “the chosen lady and her children.” For whatever reason, Diotrephes refuses to receive the bearers of 2 and 1 John, and so the elder turns to his friend Gaius for support, sending Demetrius with a letter of introduction in hand (3 John). While it is almost impossible to study John’s letters without imagining some such situation, any scenario must be held lightly and not allowed to dictate exegesis, for we simply do not know the details of the circumstances that relate these books to one another.
If we assume that John’s gospel was written about AD 85–90 and that the letters followed after the gospel had been in circulation for some time, the letters probably date from about AD 90–95, making them perhaps the last books of the NT to have been written. The gospel of John and the three letters of John appear to have been written to people within the same geographical area (probably the Roman province of Asia, which we know as the westernmost region of Turkey). The Christians named in 3 John knew each other personally, suggesting a network of churches in the same region that had frequent and routine contact. The reason 3 John, such a brief note written to one person, Gaius, was preserved is probably that it is an important part of the same story for which 1 John and 2 John were written. Therefore, we are warranted to read these three letters in light of each other and to read the letters in light of the gospel of John.
Historical-grammatical exegesis is the methodological approach used by most evangelical biblical scholars. That means interpreting the text within its original historical context and paying close attention to the actual words, syntax, and structure of the text in its original language. Notice that this is not how the church reads the Bible, generally speaking. Devotional and liturgical reading tends to dehistoricize the text by being largely unaware of its historical setting and by reading the Bible as translated into a modern language.
It is certainly true, though often not considered by the general reader, that the books of the NT were not written in the order in which they appear in the NT canon. And so at the start of study, it is helpful to consider where in the chronology of NT history a book was written, and what was happening at that time that might inform exegesis of the book. Then further, it is helpful to consider why the book appears in the sequence in which it does in the NT. Surely there was some rhyme and reason for the books to have been placed in the canonical order we find them in.
All books of the NT refer to events that happened in the first century of this era (i.e., AD 1–100, as the modern calendar numbers years), such as the life of Jesus, the spread of the gospel, and issues that arose in the infant churches. The NT books were themselves written in the second half of that century. The NT as a whole is focused on one person who lived in the early third of the first century, Jesus of Nazareth, and the significance of his life, death, and resurrection. The Gospels telling that story were written some decades later and so are concerned, first, with the events of Jesus’ lifetime recorded but, second, with what was happening in the churches to which each gospel was addressed and which shaped their content. Thus, it is appropriate to consider what was happening in the church(es) that were the original recipients of John’s gospel, most likely the last gospel to be written.
The NT letters are different from these narrative accounts of the life of Jesus because each letter addressed pressing issues of the moment rather than recounting events from a previous time period. The authors of the letters are addressing real questions, issues, and circumstances that are pressing at that moment of time. Consequently, they allow us to distinguish three periods of the first century and place the events and the origin of the books within each period: (1) Jesus’ lifetime, during which no NT books were written; (2) a period of great expansion of the gospel throughout the Roman empire (AD 33–60); (3) a period of doctrinal and ecclesial unification (c. AD 60–100). The gospel and letters of John were written within this last period, when the church at large faced huge issues, such as organized persecution of Christians by the Roman government, heresy infiltrating the church (especially from the various Greek philosophies), and a crisis of church leadership, especially as the apostles died and the Lord had not returned.
John’s letters reflect the second and third issues: heresy and a crisis of leadership. False teachers had emerged from the elder’s own church(es), and their beliefs were challenging his apostolic leadership. If the elder was John son of Zebedee, he was likely elderly and the last living apostle. As the church stood on the brink of an uncertain future in the midst of a transition to church leaders who were not apostles, there was no more critical issue than where the truth about Jesus Christ was to be found. The elder argues that Christian leadership is essentially conservative, preserving and passing to the next generation the teaching of the apostles whom the Lord himself had chosen. Innovation in Christian belief and practice had to be bounded by apostolic orthodoxy. This is relevant in every generation of the church until the Lord returns.
In principle, each of the books of the NT was endued with its normative, authoritative value as soon as the ink dried, by virtue of having been written by a divinely inspired, apostolic author. But it still took time for each book that ultimately is listed in the NT canon to be recognized as such, especially when the text began to circulate beyond the original readers and churches to which each was written. Raymond Brown summarizes:
By the mid-second century ideas, themes, and even slogans of the Johannine Epistles (or, at least, of I John) were being cited in other Christian works. But no one of the proposed similarities consists of a verbatim citation, so that it is still very difficult to be certain that any of the mentioned authors had the text of a Johannine Epistle before him.13
Nevertheless, it is likely that the text of 1 John was available to Polycarp (AD 69–155), who lived in Smyrna, a city in the region of Ephesus. Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians 7:1 (written prior to AD 140) contains a clear parallel with 1 John 4:2–3 and 2 John 7, “Everyone who does not confess Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is antichrist,” though he does not attribute it to John or his letters. There may be other, less obvious allusions to John’s letters in texts written before AD 175,14 but the earliest certain attestation of all three of these letters that has survived is from Origen (c. AD 250), who wrote that John “left also an epistle of a very few lines and, it may be, a second and a third, for not all say that these [the second and third] are genuine” (quoted in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.10). The apostolic authorship of 1 John was apparently unquestioned, and Eusebius lists it among the recognized books (see Introduction to 2 and 3 John for a discussion of the evidence from Irenaeus, who quotes both 1 and 2 John as if they were one book, which suggests they may have circulated together). All three letters were recognized as canonical by the fourth century and are included in Athanasius’s canon list (AD 367).