The preeminent theological point of John’s letters is consistent with the overarching message of the NT in general: that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has come from God the Father to die as the atoning sacrifice for sin, and on the basis of his self-sacrifice, to create for God a new covenant people who will both know him and enjoy eternal life with him. This theological point is an interpretation of the historical events of Jesus’ birth, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection. Just as the statement “Jesus Christ died on a cross in Jerusalem for your sins” is an interpretation of “Jesus of Nazareth died on a cross in Jerusalem,” John’s letters interpret the significance of the historical events concerning Jesus’ life and death. Because the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is an interpretation, the authority and credentials of the interpreter are of paramount importance to those who seek to know the truth.
It is on this point of spiritual authority that 1 John begins, with its assertion in 1:1–4 that only “we” who have heard, have seen, have touched, and have understood the one who was “from the beginning,” but who has appeared in human history, have the authority to rightly interpret the significance of his appearing. This starting point was no doubt necessary because unnamed people, who were not included in the “we” of 1:1–4, but who had “gone out” from “us” (2:19), were offering a different understanding of the significance of Jesus, possibly making his death all but irrelevant to the spiritual “truth” they preached.
Before his death, Jesus gave his closest associates the authority to testify about him and promised them that the Paraclete who would come—the Spirit of truth (John 14:16–17) or Holy Spirit (14:26)—would give them the necessary knowledge and understanding accessible only after the crucifixion and resurrection. This promise could be interpreted to mean that everyone who has the Spirit has an equal claim to the authority to define the truth about God as revealed in Christ, were it not that the promise is limited to those whom Jesus chose who were with him from the beginning (15:26–27).
The emphatic statement that the author of these letters stood with the authority of that apostolic group (1 John 1:1–4) suggests that the root of the false teaching was an unauthorized and unwarranted claim to spiritual authority that challenged the role and teaching of the elder. The elder’s assumed responsibility for and influence over the churches and individuals to whom he wrote 2 and 3 John suggests that he was working from a position of authority that was being called into question by the secessionists and Diotrephes, though perhaps for different reasons.
The question of who has the authority to declare the truth about Jesus is not a bad starting place even for theological conversations today, for we live in a world full of not only a variety of religions, but also a cacophony of “Christian” voices with a wide range of opinions about who Jesus was and about his relevance for the times in which we live. It is important for those who minister God’s Word to realize that spiritual authority is not vested in themselves, by any credential or merit, but is vested in the truth of the One whose Word they proclaim.
The author of 1 John considers the stakes to be high for those who must decide to whom to listen when it comes to the significance of Jesus Christ, for the appearance of Christ in history signals that eternal life, which was with the Father, has been revealed to “us” earthbound mortals (1 John 1:2; cf. John 1:1–18). While “the eternal Life, which was with the Father” (1 John 1:2), may primarily refer to the eternal preexistence of the Son who has appeared as a human being, the point of his appearance is to bring eternal life after physical death to all who believe in him (2:25; 3:14, 15; 5:11–13, 20; cf. John 3:15–16, 36; 4:14; 5:24, 28–29, 40; 6:40, 47, 54; 10:28; 11:25; 12:25; 17:2–3; 20:31). This long list of citations in the Johannine writings indicates the primacy of eternal life in John’s thinking.
The truth about Jesus’ role in attaining eternal life is central to the letter’s stated purpose in 1 John 5:13, “These things I write to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you might know that you have eternal life.” Eternal life, and how to attain it, is at the heart of both John’s letters and gospel (cf. John 20:31). Jesus defines eternal life in terms of knowing God: “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). If eternal life rests on knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ whom he has sent, there can be no assurance of eternal life apart from a true and genuine knowledge of God in Christ. This is why the concept of truth is so central to both John’s gospel and letters, in which the Greek words for “truth” or “knowing” are mentioned almost two hundred times. From this we can infer that John is zealous to defend and protect the truth he has received from and about Jesus Christ against competing and conflicting claims to truth that have begun to infiltrate the churches.
Theologically speaking, is any topic of greater importance? While theology brings us many blessed insights for this life about God’s being, character, and work in the world, if death were the end of all benefits from knowing about God, of what transcendent importance would it be? Since the greatest gift Christ offers is life after death, it is of greatest importance to know the truth about him, and therefore, the source of that truth becomes a primary concern in the quest for our knowledge of God. The author of 1 John argues hard to warn his readers away from voices who might seem to offer truth, but whose teaching does not lead to eternal life in Christ (1 John 2:19–25). These were people who talked about God but, because they denied that Jesus is the Christ, had no true knowledge of God the Father. First John characterizes them in strong language, calling them “liars” (2:22). Thus, the source of true spiritual knowledge is a major theological point of John’s letters.
People today also need to understand that spiritual truth about God and eternal life is not a matter of personal opinion, where one person’s thoughts are as good as another’s. There is spiritual truth and there is spiritual error and falsehood, and the difference between them is the difference between life and death.
The question of attaining eternal life, which occupies such a prominent place in John’s thinking, comes because the entire human race—each and every person—is born already dead in sin. This tragedy of cosmic proportion occurred in the garden of Eden, when the entire human race—at that time one man and one woman—rebelled against God and broke fellowship with him (Gen 3, especially v. 3). Because God himself is the source and sustenance of all life, to be a law unto oneself and consequently to walk away from God is by definition to die. When one turns away from the source of life, there is no other place to go but death.
That first rebellion against God is the source of all sins that have plagued human life ever since. Sin is the issue that breaks fellowship with God (cf. 1 John 1:3), and in its multitudinous expressions, sins break the fellowship of one person with another. Because sin resulted in death to all and we are all helpless to expunge its consequences, God himself had to deal with the problem of sin or to leave humanity in death, eternally separated from fellowship with him.
God’s love for the human race, however, led him not to leave us in death, eternally separated from him, but to put into play a plan of redemption that is the story the Bible tells in all its various books. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, they were not cast into hell but into history, where God works out the plan of his redemption. John clearly sees that God’s love for his fallen creation culminates in the execution of his Son, who became a man to die on the cross. This brought God’s plan of redemption to its ultimate fruition in atoning for the sin of the fallen world. It was in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that eternal life appeared in history (1 John 1:1–2), and is offered to all who agree with God that they are sinners in need of deliverance from death. The world’s great religions might offer moral and wise guidance for how to live this life, but only Jesus Christ by virtue of his resurrection offers eternal life after death.
Therefore, the topics of sin and the significance of Jesus Christ are inextricably entwined in 1 John, forming two of the major theological themes of the letter. Spiritual truth can be found only through right thinking about both. Some of the issues pertaining to mistaken understandings of sin and Christ’s atoning death may have arisen in the context of a misreading of the gospel of John, if it was written first, or of the Johannine tradition in its oral form.
John’s original readers had been exposed to false teaching from those who eventually left the Johannine churches. Even if 1 John 1:5–10 is not a direct reflection of that false teaching, right thinking about sin was apparently an issue in the wake of the departure that John needed to address. The character of God is the basis for all definition of sin. “God is light” (1:5), and in him is no darkness. Therefore, God himself defines the moral standard by which the human race is to live; there is no independent standard by which we can judge God. Because of that, those who profess faith in Jesus Christ must agree with God that there is such a thing as sin, that those who walk in ways contrary to God’s nature are in darkness and have no fellowship with God, and that each of us is a sinner (1:5–10). To say otherwise is to call God a liar.
However, even those who have accepted God’s greatest gift of eternal life in Christ by agreeing with God about their sin and claiming Jesus’ atonement for their forgiveness still live in a fallen world with a fallen nature, which is in the process of being transformed by the Holy Spirit. True, genuine Christians do still commit sins, in both word and deed, in both commission and omission. The proper response to that sin is not to deny it or to rationalize it, but to confess it and to claim God’s forgiveness in Christ.
John writes his letters to people who have already professed faith in Jesus Christ; therefore, his major exhortation is to remain in the truth by continuing to hold to the true significance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection (cf. John 8:31; 15:4–7; 1 John 2:24, 27–28; 4:13; 2 John 9). Forgiveness of sin and assurance of eternal life are found only by remaining in Christ, that is, by continuing to understand and believe that Jesus atoned for sin, the obstacle that separated humanity from God. Therefore, the apostolic message about who Jesus Christ is and what he has done are crucial aspects of the theology of 1 John.
The two aspects of Christology that John’s letters underscore are that (1) Jesus Christ “has come in flesh” (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7), and that (2) he “came … not in water alone—but in water and in blood” (1 John 5:6). Those who professed to be Christians but are not believers (“they have gone out from us, but they were not of us”; 2:19) are “antichrists” and “liars” because they did not continue in the truth about Christ that the elder represented (2:22). As discussed in the commentary, the issue seems to involve a dispute about the significance of Jesus’ earthly life, most particularly his death on the cross, with respect to atonement, salvation, and eternal life. The dispute about the significance of the cross is likely related to John’s emphasis on sin, for the concepts of sin and atonement are so closely related in Christian thought as to be inseparable. He links the two in 2:2, “He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins,” in the immediate context of the extended discussion about sin and its denial (1:5–2:8).
The comment that the “antichrists” deny that “Jesus Christ has come in flesh” (1 John 4:2; 2 John 7) suggests that they held an inadequate view of the significance of the incarnation of the Word who became flesh. Perhaps they held docetic tendencies that denied the physicality of Christ. Or perhaps they claimed Jesus’ promise in John’s gospel for “another Advocate [paraclete]” (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7) to mean that Jesus himself predicted he would diminish in importance once the Holy Spirit came. The rather meager references in John’s letters to the Holy Spirit’s role compared to the extensive discussion about the Paraclete in John’s gospel may corroborate the inference that the schism involved false claims made in the name of the Spirit.
Rather than discuss the Holy Spirit directly, John takes another approach to teach who has the Spirit and who does not, showing that the Spirit speaks in concert with the cross of Christ. The apostle considers any diminishment of Christ’s life and death to be sub-Christian, for the incarnation provided the human being necessary to atone for the sin of human beings, and the Holy Spirit convicts us of our need for atonement, applies the blood of Jesus to each one of us, and reassures the believer of the central truth of the gospel, that Jesus’ death and resurrection provide the entrance to eternal life.
The second false claim cited above is related, for John asserts that Jesus Christ has come “not in water alone—but in water and in blood” (1 John 5:6, italics added), where blood alludes both to Jesus’ human body and to his death on the cross. This suggests that the false teaching involved a “water only” gospel, one that eliminated or diminished the significance of the cross of Jesus. Since the cross of Jesus is where God’s love for the human race is most clearly expressed, any beliefs that take as a starting point the neglect of the cross can lead only to theological error. Because the cross of Jesus at its core is about God’s love for us, it follows naturally that the topic of love should be among the major topics of John’s letters.
Because the clearest expression of God’s love is found on the cross of Jesus, remaining in that truth entails the response of love for God. Sin alienated humanity’s relationship with God, and the atonement for that sin through Christ’s atoning death implies the restoration of fellowship with God (1 John 1:3). Within that context of that restored relationship, the appropriate response to God’s love of us is our love for God. On this point, John is similar to the Synoptic writers, who report Jesus saying that the greatest moral demand, the greatest commandment, is to love God with all one’s being—with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength (Matt 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). Then, Jesus quickly adds, the second commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27). John understands that the second is an entailment of the first and that it is spiritually impossible to love God but not to love others (1 John 2:9–10; 3:10, 14, 16, 23; 4:7, 8, 11, 20–21).
Many of us live in societies that define love as an emotion that can be held in our hearts, whether or not it is acted upon. By that definition, one could claim to love God but not show it outwardly, and who could refute the claim? But the NT in general, and John in particular, defines love not as an emotion but as treating others as we would want to be treated (cf. the parable of the good Samaritan, Luke 10:25–37). Love for God means extending ourselves and our resources to meet the needs of others (1 John 3:16–18). This is based on the example of God’s love, for he did not simply love the fallen human race in his heart; he acted at greatest cost upon that love, extending himself to us through his Son to deliver us from sin (4:9).
In the specific situation in which 1 John was written, this principle to love others is applied specifically to love for other Christians, the “brother or sister.” It is not that John wishes to narrow the love command to exclude the unbelieving neighbor, but simply that his concern at that moment was how believers were treating each other within his churches. “The one who says, ‘I am in the light,’ and hates their brother or sister is still in the darkness [i.e., sin]. The one who loves their brother or sister remains in the light” (1 John 2:9–10). The one ethical command John gives is that Christians should “love one another” (3:11; see also 4:7, 11–12; 2 John 5) even if the “world” hates us (1 John 3:13).
Christians must not hate one another, for hate is the response of the “world” to the gospel. Hate for others can never express love for God, even if it is based on a self-righteous understanding of how those others might be offending the God we love. Although some interpreters have seen the love command as so broad and general as to be practically worthless for ethical guidance,1 it is arguably a reference to Jesus’ summary of the OT law and prophets as love for God and love for others (Matt 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:27; see Theology in Application at 1 John 4:17–5:3 for a fuller discussion).
An important point of John’s theology for our age of relativism is that love, as John defines it, does not trump truth. It is not loving to allow others to continue in their sin and ignorance about God. The necessary relationship between love as God defines it and truth as Christ brought it binds the messages of John’s second and third letters to the teaching of 1 John. In those books the elder must explain why refusing to extend hospitality to those who do not bring the truth into a community is not an unloving act (2 John 10–11), even while exhorting his readers to extend hospitality to his own associates (3 John 8–11). The discernment to distinguish which situation calls for which response is rooted in knowing the truth about God in Christ, which brings the reader of these letters back to the issue of knowing the truth with certainty.
In sum, John’s letters teach that certainty of the truth that results in eternal life and a properly defined love for others rest on three pillars: (1) the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; (2) the trustworthiness of the apostolic witness to interpret the significance of Jesus Christ; and (3) the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which confirms the truth to Jesus’ followers (1 John 2:20).